Suicide Run
by notmanos
Summary: Logan and Mystique teaming up? It looks that way when a figure from their shared past surfaces with a new antimutant weapon. But does Logan dare trust Mystique? And do either of them know exactly what they're in for?
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel & Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his crew are mine - kidnap them at your own peril!_

_N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X3" and "Prey"._

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**SUICIDE RUN**

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1

Logan would have chalked this up to bad luck, except he knew damn well it was premeditated.

He looked around the bar as surreptitiously as he could, using reflective surfaces to see if he could spot their watcher without being seen himself, but Faith leaned over and nudged him with her elbow, making it look like an accident as she reached for the bowl of peanuts. "What is it?" she whispered. "Gotta vamp in here?"

"What?"

"Nostrils flare, eyes narrow and dart around the room. If I don't know the warning signs of you about to open up a can of whoop ass, I must be stupider than I look," she replied, tossing a peanut in her mouth and chewing it lazily. "So what's the haps?"

"It's not a vampire, but a fucking psychopathic mutant," he grumbled, trying to spot them in the mirror over the bar. He didn't catch anyone staring at them, so he couldn't narrow down his suspects. Of course the bar had to be crowded tonight.

The Schooner was a vaguely nautically themed bar full of dark wood and fake leather on a Vancouver pier, just campy enough to be popular amongst the younger, hipper crowd. Faith liked it, although she often derided the clientele, many of whom were so neat and well scrubbed that Logan felt embarrassed for them. Where was the rebellion? The bad hair, the worse clothes, the loud music that sounded like a band saw cutting into a metal hull? Youth was supposed to be about striking out at the older generation, giving them the finger in more ways than one, but these kids were all fucking sell outs. He wanted to smack them all on the back of the head.

At least the bartenders were usually interesting. For instance, tonight's bartender was an Asian woman who had shaved her head bald, had a tattoo of morning glory on her neck, and wore enough hardware in her face that she could have been used as a boat anchor. She was still kind of attractive too. She claimed her name was "Haze", but Logan knew that was a lie.

"Really?" Faith asked, sounding more intrigued than scared. She tried to do a little surreptitious looking around of her own. "What do they look like? What can they do?"

"I dunno. They shapeshift."

"Oh. So, they can look like anyone? Which is why you don't know what they look like?"

"Got it."

She looked around for a moment, then took a drink of her beer. "Bummer."

"If I search 'em out, will you be okay?"

Faith raised an eyebrow at him. "You do remember who you're talking to, right? If you're lookin', I'm comin' with you."

"Faith, she's bad news."

"_She?" _she repeated, grinning now. "All right, chick fight. This oughta be fun."

"Yeah, they're always kinda sexy," a woman said in a husky voice, coming up to the bar on his left hand side and slipping onto one of the high stools.

Logan didn't even look, he just put his fist at the base of her spinal cord, and growled, "Twitch and die."

Mystique chuckled warmly, like he was flirting with her. "Come now, old man. If I wanted to fight you I'd have waited outside with a high powered rifle and shot you through the ear canal when you came out the door. Then I'd have played with your cute little girlfriend until you healed."

Damn - that was a pretty good plan.

Faith leaned over the bar to get a better look at Mystique, and snapped, "Bring it, bitch."

Mystique smiled at her, licking her lips in a predatory manner. "Any time you want, jailbait."

"You have five seconds to tell me why you're here or I'm popping my claws," he warned, staring at her and gaining her attention away from Faith.

Tonight she looked like a statuesque blonde in a turquoise silk blouse and matching miniskirt that clung to her like it was painted on. Of course it basically was, as it was all her skin, which was completely creepy if you thought about it. Her eyes were the color that her skin usually was, and her white-blonde hair was shoulder length and looked as soft as fur. Men all over the bar were staring at her, and many were probably wondering why the hell she was sitting next to him.

Mystique sighed dramatically, like he was being unreasonable. "I just want to talk, Logan. We have a common problem."

"Cut the shit and tell me what the game is."

"Am I lying?"

That was the hell of it - he didn't think she was. Then again, if you were psychotic enough to believe everything that fell out of your mouth, you'd never appear to be lying on a lie detector test, even one as sensitive as his nose. "You back with the Brotherhood?"

That seemed to startle a genuine laugh out of her. "Are you kidding? Some kid runs it now. They think hacking websites is a radical act. Bunch of fucking lightweights."

"Why don't you take it over?"

"What use do I have for snot nosed brats?"

The fact that Mystique sounded like she was being honest unnerved him deeply. This had to be a set up. "You kill Magneto yet?"

Now she smirked, her eyes brightening visibly at the thought. "The old bastard's hiding from me. You don't know where he is, do you?"

"If I did, I'd have killed him myself."

Again that warm chuckle, It was really getting on his nerves. "That's what I've always liked about you, old man - you don't fuck around. So why are you with Xavier's pussies?"

"'Cause he ain't a raving psycho," Faith interjected. "Now what the hell's your deal? Are we throwing down or what?"

Mystique's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Why don't you run along and play, normal? Leave us more evolved types to talk."

"She's not a normal," Logan said, before Faith could reach across the bar and punch her. Since Mystique presumably didn't know about demons and slayers, it was probably better to stretch the truth in this way. Hopefully Faith would play along.

Mystique eyed Faith warily. "Oh really? What have you got?"

"Strength mutation," Logan quickly answered for her. He seriously hoped she didn't kick his ass for this later.

But Faith, good sport that she was, played along. "Strong enough to put you through a wall, super skank. So why don't you just say what you're gonna say and piss off?"

He could love this woman eternally. Seriously, he could marry her tonight.

Mystique glared daggers at Faith for a moment, then snickered as she broke into a grin so feral that a weaker person would have pissed their pants. "Kitty has claws. It's a major turn on. I bet you're dynamite in the sack."

Faith just stared right back at her. "Are you seriously flirting with me? Is that the best you can do?"

Logan pressed his fist insistently against Mystique's back, just in case she forgot he had his sheathed claws right over her spinal column. "Talk. I'm getting impatient."

"Aren't you always? An old friend of ours has suddenly resurfaced - Emil Vogel."

Logan looked at Mystique, waiting for more, but nothing else was apparently forthcoming. "I haven't the slightest fucking idea who that is."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, your goddamn amnesia. Fine. Do you remember Operation Overlord?"

He was about to tell her no, but he stopped, as he had a strange feeling. It almost sounded familiar, didn't it? But in a way he couldn't name. It was like an itch in the back of his mind, a word on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't quite spit out. "Wasn't that some World War Two thing?" Faith asked.

"I believe the name has been used a couple of times for different operations," Mystique said, like the old spy she was. "The one I'm referring to took place in Russia in the '80's."

Logan shook his head. "I don't remember the '80's at all."

Mystique smiled humorlessly. "Lucky you. Long story short: You and I are were sent in to recover a weapon Vogel was developing for the Russian government, although we weren't working for the same team. The details of the weapon were left vague, but we discovered that Vogel was a genetic engineer, and was trying to engineer a virus that would kill mutants. It was in a theoretical stage, but it had a certain plausibility. You and I decided to change the game and destroyed all his work, blaming each other for doing it so our employers wouldn't exterminate us. Vogel dropped off the radar soon after - the government was not happy that all their time and money had gone to waste, and they sent him to rot in Siberia. Fast forward to the end of communism, and Vogel was released from Siberia and quickly disappeared. I heard he was in Sao Paolo, but I was never able to track him down."

"Why did you want to track him down?" Faith wondered.

Logan knew the answer before she answered. "He's a loose end and dangerous. I don't like to leave those alive. Anyways, just by random chance while I was still being held in one of America's fascist detention cells - just before the cure wore off - I overheard a couple of G-Men talking about Vogel putting a new weapon on the market, and the government's covert inquiries into buying it before anyone else could get it. As soon as I got my powers back and broke out of there, I ransacked their files for everything they had on Vogel. They don't know if he's in the States or Canada -" this made her scoff. "American intelligence has never been more of an oxymoron than it is now. But the bottom line is there's going to be a black market auction, with Vogel's weapon going to the highest bidder, and it's here, in Vancouver. It came in through the port."

Logan was listening to all of this with a kind of dazed skepticism, but Faith was listening with rapt attention. "What kind of weapon is it? Another virus?" she asked.

Mystique shook her head. "From what I heard, it's even worse. A gene coded poison, something that could be dumped in a large water supply. It wouldn't do anything to the norms, but it would kill everything with an active X gene."

"Holy shit," Faith gasped. "Can they do that? I mean, the technology's that good?"

Logan shrugged, but then admitted, "They're always tryin' to find new ways to kill us."

"I knew you'd get it, old man."

He scowled at her. "I don't get why you're telling me all this. Nostalgia? You can't have the warm fuzzies for a memory you don't have. And I have no reason to trust a single goddamn thing fallin' out of you mouth."

She gazed at him like he was the stupidest thing to ever crawl out from under a rock. "Investigate Vogel yourself. Maybe it'll trigger a bit of recall. I can't believe I never did."

"So you're claiming you know me, that you've known me for a long time."

She shook her head, disappointed, and took his beer bottle and had a swig. "You were Moose and Squirrel to my Boris and Natasha … or vice versa. I can't remember which of those was more flattering. We butted heads a few times, but we could never quite manage to kill each other. Not that we didn't give it very good tries. Now that I think about it, I think you were the longest relationship I ever had." She put the bottle back down, but as far as Logan was concerned, it was hers now. "It may be difficult to imagine now, but you used to be very good. You weren't the smartest, but you survived - that was your gift. Everyone else could be tumbling off the battlefield, but you'd still be there, hanging on. I could kill every single member of an Organization unit, but as soon as the smoke cleared, there you were being all pissy. It was almost admirable, in its fucked up way." She smiled faintly. "You should have seen the shit fit my handler had after that time in Vienna. _"Why won't that cocksucking motherfucker just die?!" _Hilarious."

"Well, that certainly sounds like you," Faith told him.

He gave her a sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye that he hoped she interpreted as "don't encourage her", and wondered which would be worse: the possibility that Mystique was lying to fuck with him, or the possibility that she was telling the truth to fuck with him. He was dying to ask _"What time in Vienna?" _but felt that would be falling for her bullshit. Was there plausibility here? Maybe. Yes, he worked for the Organization as their good little killing machine, and he knew from some of the things Xavier had told him that Mystique had been an assassin and worked for some government, although it was never clear who. All the training she had seemed to indicate a high level operative, and certainly her ability would make infiltration a natural skill. Also her age was a question mark - she could theoretically be as old as him, although he doubted it. How much of this did he dare to believe? He shoved it aside, along with the anger he felt at realizing that, if she was telling the truth, she knew a great deal more about his past than he did and had never bothered to share it with him. But then again, she was an evil bitch - why would she?

He rubbed his temple, and asked, "I don't see what the fuck any of this has to do with me. You want Vogel, go get him. I know you can."

"Yes, but I'd like to make it easier if possible."

"Meaning what?"

"You know I have no problem handling a crowd, but Vogel's aware that mutants won't like this if they get word of it, and there are some governments that aren't happy with him either. He's surrounded himself with Russian mobsters, many of who are ex-Stasi. I don't know if there any mutants in the bunch yet, but I know they have enough armaments smuggled up from the States to take over the government in a bloody coup. Vogel is my target, so I'm offering you a deal: I get Vogel, you get the weapon. Between the two of us, I'm sure we can take out the entire Stasi contingent, and any other subsequent cannon fodder Vogel is hiding behind."

It was his turn to scoff at her. "What the fuck kind of deal is that? You make work for me? You don't want that weapon in anyone's hands either, darlin'. You can't convince me you'd just let it go."

"Would you really want the weapon in my hands?" she countered, smiling slyly.

He glared at her. "This is bullshit. What's your game? Why am I so fucking important?"

She grinned at him in an evil way, showing lots of perfect white teeth, and Logan was sure she had added a couple she didn't need. "The key word was "mafia", Logan. The Russian mafia? Just think what they'll do when they hear Logan Yashida is here and after them."

So that was it. Yeah, that made sense. The Russian mafia knew who he was - it was through Russian intelligence that Bob found those records on Bloody Friday. The Yakuza had the most reason to hate him, but the Triad and the Russians shared the sentiment. In fact, every organized crime group that had heard of him probably just loathed him on general principal.

"Yashida?" Faith repeated, studying him. "Isn't that, uh, Japanese?"

Mystique ignored her. "They hear about you, they'll panic. Panicky people, no matter how good their training, get sloppy. And that's how I get in. They'll be so freaked out by you they'll never notice they've been compromised."

He glared at her with open scorn. "So I'm a decoy. I take the shots and make the noise, while you sneak into their nest and kill 'em while they sleep."

"Oh no, never in their sleep. You never get to see their expressions when you kill them in their sleep." Her grin was savage and completely calculated. Was that for Faith's benefit? It couldn't have been for his, because he knew her too damn well for it to bother him. She was a crazy bitch? What a fucking news flash. Next thing you know, somebody would claim water was wet.

"There's still nothing in this for me, Mystique."

"Beyond peace of mind? Then try this on for size, Logan. The Organization thinks they obliterated all records of you, but they weren't as detail minded as they should have been. I can get records on you, Logan, ones they thought they'd put to bed a long time ago. Your life before them and without them. I know where to find all sorts of things. It's rather amusing how no one ever seems to plan for me."

"I've done okay."

She shrugged a single shoulder. "We're a breed apart, old man. While all of these soft … normals were sleeping in their cribs, we were fighting wars that these idiots never heard of and couldn't care less about even if they had. I was born for battle, and you were built for it. Which is why I never figured out why you joined up with Xavier's goody two shoes brigade. Except you always did have a sentimental streak that undermined you at every turn. Still does, doesn't it?" She stood up, gracefully sliding past his fist, and he let her, because he was so pissed off at her right now that there was no move she could make that he couldn't beat.

She reached into her shirt and pulled out a business card sized piece of paper, which she dropped on the bar in front of him. "If you're interested, call me. I'll share all the intell I have on Vogel and the small army guarding him."

"I don't trust you for shit," he pointed out, in case she missed that very basic fact.

She shrugged again, this time using most of her upper body, a disturbingly sinuous move. "I don't trust you either. But you've never been a rat, old man. Unlike some people, you won't stab me in the back. If you were going to do that, you'd have the decency to stab me in the front." She then turned on her heel and walked out of the bar, most of the men watching her go. Wow, Magneto had really fucked her up, hadn't he?

But what really bothered him was she was right. He hated backstabbers. If you were gonna sell someone down the river, you could at least man up and tell them to their face before you did it. Maybe because he himself had been betrayed one too many times to like it.

"She's got the whole creepy thing nailed down, doesn't she?" Faith said.

"It's been her life work," he agreed, looking at the piece of paper she'd left behind. Vancouver number, probably a really good hotel.

"Thinks she's on the level?"

"I dunno. Psychopaths lie real well, so I can't always tell by smell."

"Do you remember her? I mean, working with her?"

He shook his head. "But I know she was a spy at some point. She's too good not to be."

"Think you slept with her?"

That had never even occurred to him. "God, I hope not."

She grinned slyly, mischief twinkling in her eyes. "I don't know. It might be fun to sleep with someone who could be anybody you wanted them to be. I mean, if she was a man, she could alter the size of her d-"

"Could we please not go there?" he interrupted. "I already feel vaguely nauseous as it is."

Her smile was very unsympathetic, but she patted his hand kindly. "Sorry. Look, we can check into this guy ourselves. I mean, if she is telling the truth, this is something we should look into."

"We, kemosabe?"

"Don't start. Besides, we mutants need to look after ourselves." She took a deep swig of her beer, and then, as soon as she put the empty bottle on the bar, asked, "So, Yashida?"

He wondered if he should go kick Mystique's ass just for giving him more shit to explain.


	2. Chapter 2

2

He probably shouldn't have been surprised, but Faith was pretty adapt at surfing the web, and she "knew some people" who had unconventional information sources. (This was Watcher aligned somehow, wasn't it?) But he still had the most unconventional information source known to man - he called Marc.

Marc, Matt, and Sid were "somewhere between the asshole of Spain and the armpit of France", according to Marc. (He assumed those were vague directions and not a comment on the people or the general smell, but how was he to know for sure?) Still, he got on his laptop and found information on Emil Vogel that he shouldn't have been able to find at all, which was typical for Marc.

Mystique didn't seem to have been lying about him. He was a genetic engineer who worked for the Soviet government throughout the '80's, and was considered unpleasant by even those who liked him, which was really saying something. He had a mad on for mutants, often saying they were the unfortunate result of German experiments in World War Two, which was a blatant lie, but got him the funds to investigate exterminating them. Overlord blew up in his face - literally it seemed, as his lab blew up; incendiary bomb with white phosphorus, which burned hotter than hell and sterilized every damn thing in his lab during vaporization (so whose bright idea was that - his or Mystique's? Either way, good call on the phosphorus. Although considering how toxic WP was, Logan had a feeling he handled it). After that, he got his ass slung into Siberia, and probably should have died, but somehow he survived until Gorbachev. Then he seemed to just drop off the face of the earth, at least as far as Marc's data went, although he said unsubstantiated reports put him in Oslo, Bangkok, Sao Paolo (maybe she was on to something there), and, rather inexplicably, Dallas, but he was never pinned down. Marc said there was a better than even chance he'd had plastic surgery to alter his identity, perhaps a couple of times. "Find the guy whose skin is stretched so tight he can't sit down and sneeze at the same time. That'll be him," he said cheerily. Marc had emailed him a couple of surveillance shots that were most likely Vogel, but the problem was they were so grainy and indistinct they weren't much help. But what could you expect from security cameras?

He wanted to tell Faith to stay out of it, but there was no way to do that. She would kick his ass if he tried to baby her in any respect. This was his fault ultimately - if he just found meek women attractive, this wouldn't be an issue.

Faith knew he was uncomfortable about letting her come along, so she attempted to change the subject by asking about the theme songs that Bob had picked for him, which suggested she had talked to Angel. Reluctantly he told her, and they both decided that Muse's "Stockholm Syndrome" was perhaps the best one. Faith decided she liked White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" for herself, and started altering her ringtone accordingly. While she was doing that, he called the number Mystique had left him.

It rung five times before she picked up, and she didn't even bother to say hi. "So you looked him up yourself?"

"I could have been room service."

"But you weren't," she replied coolly. "Unless you're offering. In that case, I could really go for a cheeseburger."

He scowled at the phone even though he knew she couldn't see it. He stared out at the lovely view of the city Faith had from her apartment, the one Tony paid for as part of her employment. Vancouver seemed to be laid out at his feet like a jeweled carpet reaching towards the glistening expanse of water, and he was reminded how pretty a city it was. He just wished he didn't have such bad memories associated with it. "So white phosphorus, huh?"

This turn of conversation didn't surprise her. But then again, what did? Mystique didn't seem to be the type of person who was ever surprised. Perhaps that was natural to being a shape shifter - she didn't just alter her appearance to fit the situation, she simply adapted to whatever was going on. She was the ultimate survivor, making the phrase "adopt, adapt, and move on" redundant. "Wily Pete," she said, using what he recognized as a military nickname for it. "Good old cold war. That shit was abundant in both Russian and American military bases. Toxic waste my ass - nobody gave that up. It had too many uses to be discarded. Who gave a shit if it was as harmful to its users as it was the enemy?"

"That was my job, wasn't it? Handling it."

"It wasn't like it was going to hurt you."

True enough. "Do you even know where Emil is? I have sources who seem to believe that he's had so much plastic surgery as to be unrecognizable."

"Sources? You mean Scorpion, don't you?"

He knew she'd probably said that to shock him, but he didn't take the bait. "He gets around, doesn't he?"

"He's well known in mercenary circles. Bad ass customer, from what I hear. How the fuck did he ever get involved with the X-Men? "

"He never joined."

"No shit. I don't see Xavier welcoming a man with the weapons stockpile of a South American dictatorship."

"Storm doesn't like him either."

This made her chuckle warmly. "I bet she doesn't, the fucking tight ass. I'm surprised you're still around."

"Honestly? Me too. So do you know where Emil is or not?"

"I'm not discussing it over an unsecured line."

"If there was a bug on the phone, I'd hear it."

"Not if they were recording from the source. There'd be no extraneous noise."

"Yeah, well, we're in Canada. You still hafta have a legal reason to listen in on someone else's conversations here."

"Perhaps. But I'm not taking any chances."

"If this is some kinda trap -"

She sighed heavily. "Aren't we beyond that?"

"Will we ever be beyond that?" he replied. "We'll be there in twenty minutes." Actually it was only ten minutes away, but he wanted time to case the joint, just in case she had some surprises laying in wait. No, he didn't trust her; he couldn't.

"We? Don't bring your plaything."

"Don't call her that." He cast a glance over his shoulder, just to make sure Faith hadn't heard that.

"Your sentimental streak is showing again, old man."

"Giving a shit about someone else doesn't make you sentimental."

"In this business it does," she replied coldly. "I don't care how strong she is. Strength doesn't equal fighting ability, and you of all people should know that."

"I do. And she has excellent fighting ability. Trust me, hand to hand combat is a specialty. I've seen her kill someone with the leg of a chair." Okay, it was a vampire, but Mystique didn't need to know that.

There was a long moment of grudging silence. "That's not that hard," she said, but somewhat bitterly. "A third person might needlessly complicate things."

"Faith won't."

"Not for me. But for you - she'll be a distraction. You can't fight and try and keep an eye out for her at the same time."

"She can take care of herself."

"Uh huh. Even if she can, it doesn't work that way for you, not now."

There was just something about the way she said that … "What d'ya mean not now?"

"When I first encountered you, you were a perfect weapon of mass destruction. But then something started to happen to you. You started to get erratic, become less dependable, and they began teaming you up with younger female partners. Maybe that was the problem. Estrogen makes you weak in the knees. Or maybe it was all the mindfucking, who knows? But you started to … care. You started worrying about the greenies and about collateral damage more than you should have. Which I liked, because it made you easier to manipulate, but I can't imagine the Organization was thrilled by these sudden spurts of conscience."

"Collateral damage? You're talking about civilians."

"If they get in my way, they're not civilians."

If he wasn't convinced he had to get involved in this before, he was now. "That's bullshit. If I'm doin' this, let's get two things clear: Faith is part of the deal. She comes with me, or I don't show up. And two, no civilians. No killing someone who isn't actively trying to kill you. Do you understand? I'll hang up now and forget I ever talked to you if you don't agree."

There was a long pause before she replied resentfully, "See how this sentimental streak fucks you up, old man?"

"Those are my terms. Take them or I walk."

She snorted derisively. "And you would too, wouldn't you? Bullheaded fucker."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Fine," she spat, like the word was poison. "But you'd better be on your game. No getting distracted because you don't know where your fuck buddy is."

He would have complained about that, except she was trying to get a rise out of him, and he refused to play that game. "I know how to fight, okay? You wouldn't be askin' me if I didn't. We'll be there soon." He hung up before she could give him any more shit.

"That sounded fun," Faith said.

"It always is." As he turned to face her, he wondered if there was a good way to tell her, and decided no, he'd just have to say it. "If Mystique ever attacks you, assume she's trying to kill you and react accordingly. Don't go soft on her like a normal human. She can alter her muscle density, she's almost as strong as you. Beat the shit out of her. But stick to the extremities, as she can shift her own internal organs to some degree to avoid damage, but she can't shift her neck and head that much. Okay?"

Faith gave him a scrutinizing look. "I'd accuse you of tryin' to scare me off, but after seein' this, I believe you."

She tossed him her iPhone, and he saw she'd been using the wireless internet on it, as a web page was displaying. It was basically a mugshot of Mystique in all her blue skinned glory, with a list of her most recent crimes, which included killing fourteen people while breaking out of a maximum security prison. (Fourteen seemed like an excessive number - clearly she was pissed off.) She was now number one on the FBI's most wanted list. "Think once we got this guy we should call and tip the feds off about her?" Faith wondered.

He considered it only a moment before shaking his head and handing her back her phone. "Absolutely not."

"You're not a rat."

"It's more than that. All we'll do is get a bunch of feds killed. They won't get her; they'll just die horribly. I think she's killed enough of their people for now."

Faith glanced at the web page once more before shutting down the phone. "But they captured her before, right? In her mutant form?"

"That was a ruse, a plan that she and Magneto put in to action to free some other captured mutants. If she doesn't want to be held she won't be held. Her power isn't the dangerous thing about her - she is. She is simply lethal. We should be thankful she doesn't have a more devastating power, or the world would be a smoking crater by now."

She eyed him skeptically, and after a moment, asked, "You're not scared of her, are you?"

He shook his head. "Not for me, no, 'cause at the end of the day I could just cut off her fucking head. It's others I'm worried about. Everybody thinks Magneto is the dangerous one, but they were always wrong. Without her brains and her sociopathic hatred of everyone who isn't a mutant, he'd have never gotten anywhere."

She took that in with a nod, convinced but still a little wary of the whole deal. "Is she really blue and scaly?"

Oh boy, this was going to be fun.

* * *

She was staying at a very nice hotel, the Ashford, where the uniformed staff gave them dirty, suspicious looks the moment they stepped into the polished wood and plush velvet lobby. He and Faith were both wearing jeans and leather jackets, with him wearing a flannel shirt over an olive t-shirt and Faith wearing a tight brown t-shirt advertising Molson on the front. So okay, they looked a little downscale and blue collar for this place, but fuck them - Faith worked as a bodyguard for the richest man in the city. One call to Tony and they would all be bowing obsequiously before them.

Mystique had a room on the fourteenth floor - actually the thirteenth, but the superstitious builders just went from twelve to fourteen. He bet it appealed to Mystique's twisted sense of whimsy.

She answered the door as an older, distinguished looking Indian man in a three piece suit, with elegantly swept back salt and pepper hair. After eyeing both of them, she said sarcastically, "Nice of you two to dress up." Just for fun, she'd thrown in a hint of a fairly accurate Punjabi accent.

As soon as they were inside and she'd shut the door, she morphed back into her actual self - blue skinned, scaly, slicked back red hair - and Faith didn't visibly react, but Logan, who still had a hand on her arm, felt her tense. It probably was pretty freaky to watch Mystique change for the first time. "You stand out a bit, don't you think?" she accused, in her usual deep and slightly strange voice. She was staring straight at him, having already dismissed Faith with the barest of glances.

"I always stand out, but remarkably no one seems to remember me," he replied, not at all bothered by her challenge. This was hardly the first time he'd dealt with her. "So what do you have on Vogel?"

She smirked in a deeply unfriendly way. "No foreplay, old man? You're usually so good at it."

Once again, he didn't take the bait. He felt proud of his own self-restraint, because, if Faith weren't here, he was pretty sure he would have decked her. "Aren't we on a time limit? Or is he not due in until December and you're just fucking around with us?"

The slur to her professionalism got her moving, as he thought it would. What Mystique had was basically circumstantial evidence: large glossy photos of men in dark coats (big enough to hide weapons) and sunglasses in large conglomerations, many sporting the tattoos that were the hallmark of the Russian mafia. (The Triad and the Yakuza also had telltale tattoos, although not all their operatives had them - as far as he knew, the Italian mafia was one of the few that didn't use it as an identifying system.) They were outside their usual spots in the city too, which was odd. She also had photos - with close ups of the plates - of a dark Escalade that looked like it had some minor armor augmentation, made to look like a custom body job. She had photos of a small man wearing a wide brimmed fedora style hat, but he was usually so swallowed up by bigger Russian mafiosos that not even a hint of his face was visible.

"So you have no fucking idea what he looks like," Logan pointed out, a bit disappointed.

She scowled at him. "We don't need to know what he looks like. He's the guy in the crowd not packing hardware. He's an easy hit."

"As long as this isn't a decoy."

Her odd black and yellow eyes studied him coldly, as if he'd just said something profoundly stupid. "Then we kill them all. One is bound to be the right one."

Faith snorted derisively. "Uh, hate to burst your bubble Smurfette, but when the first dozen or so corpses turn up, I have a feeling not only will the Borscht Belters know about it, but so will the cops. You'll be racing the clock as well as fighting steeper odds. It'd be a shitload easier if you could just confirm that the guy was the one you wanted before going all Quentin Tarantino on their asses."

Mystique turned a nasty glare on her, her eyes narrowing and her upper lip curving up in a sneer. "Listen, bimbo -"

"Stop right there," Logan interrupted, stepping between Mystique and Faith so they couldn't have a staring contest. "She has a point. If the cops start coming after us -"

"We kill them. What's hard about that?"

Faith made a noise of exasperation, and Logan knew exactly how she felt. "Do you know you're on the FBI's most wanted list?"

Mystique shrugged, unconcerned. "Who gives a fuck? They can't stop me."

"But if they figure out you're in Vancouver, this place will be flooded by Feds of all stripes. American, Canadian, and who knows, maybe even the X-Men on a civic duty run. All of this while trying to find the real Vogel, who just might rabbit the second he gets wind that some old friends are out to get him. If we're too overt at the wrong time, we blow this. You're the expert at deep cover infiltration - you should know this."

The look she gave him could have stopped his heart if she had any telekinetic powers. In fact, he was half convinced she was going to take a swing at him, and he readied himself to block the blow, curling his fist and getting ready to pop his claws. Having Faith here would mean he'd have to go for the devastating injury right away, so Mystique didn't try and use her as a shield or leverage.

Maybe she saw that in his eyes; maybe she knew that. Or just maybe she realized that for once, she was the one out of line. She looked away, crossing her arms over her chest tightly like she didn't trust having her own hands free. He watched her muscles twitch in her jaw as she ground her teeth.

Logan suddenly realized the other element at play here - holy shit, this was personal. Had Vogel done something to Mystique? Mystique was taking this all very personally, emotionally, which she never did. It was making her slip, making her reckless in ways that she never was. What had Vogel done? Conveniently she'd left that out of her story. He was tempted to ask, but for some reason he thought he shouldn't ask in front of Faith.

Had Vogel done something to him too? Was that why she came to him - did she think he'd want revenge too? What could Vogel have possibly done?

Did he even want to know?

Mystique finally looked back at him, her anger submerged beneath her usual cold neutrality. "Wait a minute. You were in his lab. How's your scent memory, old man?"

"Sense memory?" Faith repeated, hearing her wrong.

But Logan knew what she was getting at. "If I've smelled him before … I should be able to recognize him again. I won't have a name to put to the scent - _"This is Vogel" _- but it will be familiar in an unnamable way. Déjà vu. They never were able to take away the imprinted memories of scent."

Mystique smiled slowly, serenely, like a psychotic blue Buddha. "Then it's up to you to find our man."

Goddamn it. He should have known no good was ever going to come out of this conversation.


	3. Chapter 3

3

It's was Faith's idea, so he wondered what he'd done to piss her off. It was probably the Mystique thing.

Or maybe not. It wasn't actually as bad as he thought. She had thought since shaving off his stubble and sideburns gave him maybe a half hour of hairlessness, he should try waxing it. In theory that would last six weeks, so she figured he may have up to two hours of clean shaven appearance. It was worth a shot, and she applied the wax and ripped it off, and while he braced for pain, it wasn't that bad. He expected something hideous, and it was just a hot stinging sensation. The Forty Year Old Virgin had lied, damn it! Either that, or it was his high pain tolerance. Nothing really compared to having molten adamantium injected into your body or having someone use a bone saw on you while you were still conscious.

He thought he looked horribly funny without any facial hair, he didn't recognize himself in the mirror, but that was the whole point. Combined with a watch cap and cheap, dark sunglasses, he looked like he could have been anybody, and this anonymity was heightened by a plain t-shirt/jeans/ hiking boots wardrobe. He refused to give up his brown leather jacket, because he felt he had to have a little bit of style … although Faith snickered when he said style. What? It was a nice jacket! Okay, it was kind of old and battered, and he'd once been stabbed in it, but the blood came out once he ripped out the lining.

Before he left, she felt his still smooth jaw line, and said, "How weird is this?"

"Not having a beard? Very weird."

"No. I mean … you're really good looking. Not that I don't think you're a good looking guy normally, 'cause you're a sexy beast. It's just … huh. This isn't quite what I imagined you'd look like under all the fur."

This was making him very uncomfortable. Was she flattering him or insulting him? Doing both at once? He was leaning towards both at once. "I think I'd rather not see myself."

"A psychologist would have a field day with that statement."

"Yeah, well … good thing neither of us are shrinks." He gave her a kiss and headed out on morning reconnaissance duty.

The Russian mafia conglomerations seemed to be settled around the dock areas, specifically around the region of two hotels, the Chelsea and the Pacific Grand. Although Mystique had done a yeoman's job of surveillance, she had been unable to confirm which hotel Vogel was in. He was using a new Western alias, and it was more than likely that a decoy using a somewhat similar name was staying in the other hotel to throw any enemies off the scent. Metaphorically speaking.

These were touristy areas, with lots of cafes and small shops, so he sat at the outdoor table of a coffee place which had a good view of both the Chelsea and the Grand, ordered a needlessly frou frou green tea, and simply waited. He wished he could read, but he couldn't take his eyes off the front of the hotels. Faith had loaned him her iPod, although she had loaded on some songs that she thought an old guy like him might like. He only listened with one of the ear buds plugged in, as he still needed to hear what was going on around him, and occasionally pretended to read a newspaper.

One of the old guy songs she had loaded up was Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army", which struck Logan as ironically funny. That chorus - _"And I would rather be anywhere else but here today_" - applied not only to this situation, but to his life in general. He just had one of those lives that might have looked good on paper, but was actually fairly horrible when you lived with it.

It was better to think about this and the strange banalities of Canadian politics (who, bless their hearts, had never even considered mutant legislation of any sort - a few of those weird religious far righters brought it up, but it was far too radical for anyone else to think about it, or, in other words, way too American) than what may have happened with Vogel. He and Mystique had been working for different sides, even though they obviously had the same goal: taking possession of Overlord. So what could Vogel have done that affected both of them, and in such a way that Mystique assumed he'd want revenge as badly as she did? What were the options? Death, torture, imprisonment, mayhem - the usual, in other words. But how did the pieces fit? How did he and Mystique decide to work together for once? How did this all lead up to Vogel escaping while Logan planted a white phosphorus bomb in his lab? There were way too many questions, leading to two possibilities: Mystique was lying. Or it was so nasty he really was better off not knowing.

He had just shuffled around the play list until he landed on a Tool song - now Tool was never fail, excellent fight music - when he noticed three men in dark coats walk by, headed up the street. It wasn't an especially warm day, but it was sunny and not bad for Canada, and yet they were all wearing black leather gloves. To cover tattoos? Probably. He heard a snatch of conversation as they walked past, and they were speaking Russian. (They were also discussing someone's wife in less than flattering terms.) He watched and waited, putting his sunglasses back on so they didn't notice the direction of his eyes.

Groups of these dark suited men gathered like a murder of crows in front of both hotels, making themselves conspicuous and yet inconspicuous at the same time. Perhaps there was a thug convention in town.

He finished his tea and started casually sauntering up the street, picking the Chelsea side only because it shared a street with the coffee shop. He turned off the iPod and put it away, catching bits and pieces of Russian conversation. Nothing illuminating; someone didn't like Canada, another guys was complaining that he was getting hemorrhoids from sitting around so much (which made Logan feel like thanking him for that newsflash). But someone complained that this was all "needlessly paranoid", and Logan was inclined to agree with him.

Eventually two subtly armored Escalades pulled up outside of both hotels, the one on the Chelsea side of the street bearing the plates Mystique had photographed, and more dark suited but obviously well built men boiled out of both doorways. Certainly Vogel - or Vogel's double - was soon to come out and duck into the SUV.

Logan wandered up to the nearest black clad thug, and asked, with a heavy Alberta accent, "'Scuse me, do you got the time?"

The man was taller than him, and if he wasn't wearing shoulder pads under his jacket, then he was the squarest man he'd ever seen: square jaw, square shoulders, head beveled like a stair post. His hair was brown and cut painfully short, making his ears stick out like handles. He smelled like gun oil, body odor, cigarettes, and, inexplicably, doughnuts. Logan could tell he was glaring down his nose at him, even though he was wearing black sunglasses. Logan repeated, in his hammiest Canadian bumpkin accent, "Time?"

The big Russian monolith finally said, in heavily accented English, "I don't speak English." Which Logan knew was total bullshit.

Still, he played up his role as a generic idiot. "Time?" He repeated the word louder, pointing at his wrist. "Time?!" He was tapping his wrist with greater emphasis now.

The Russian was just radiating disdain. He spun on his heels, showing his broad back, a way of saying _"Fuck off" _without actually uttering the words. He muttered under his breath "Stupid son of a whore", but in Russian, so Logan knew better than to react to it. It was then that Vogel - or Vogel clone - came out of the Chelsea. The men were stacked side by side, so it was impossible to get a good glimpse of him without being obvious about it, so Logan turned to the side, trying to catch the man's reflection in the car's shiny surface, and took a deep breath, parsing the scents.

There were so many men here it was difficult; he smelled lots of guns and tobacco and body odor and cologne and hair gel and alcohol and everything they had for breakfast that spilled on them or was oozing through their pores. The foods were familiar, even some of the colognes and hair gel … but the men? As the man who would be Vogel was hustled into the Escalade, Logan turned and walked away, sure he had smelled all he needed to here.

He ducked into a shop doorway and pulled out his cell phone, and faked punching in a number and talking to an enraged spouse. It was cover for the lingering Russian mobsters, as there were too many to have fit in the Escalades with him. It was shockingly easy to pretend to be a henpecked husband, explaining he'd be late because he turned down the wrong street, pausing for good lengths of time so his phantom wife could chew him out for being such an idiot. A couple of them shot looks at him as they walked on past, but at least one seemed to scowl in that "poor son of a bitch" way.

They had pretty much scattered when a lean black man in a blue polo shirt and khakis approached him, chuckling warmly. "Do you got the time? That was classic, old man," Mystique said, in a voice that sounded like James Earl Jones. No, it was James Earl Jones; she looked like Tiger Woods, but sounded like Darth Vader sans breathing apparatus. "Brilliant. I knew there was a reason you were the only X-Man I didn't totally hate. Your memory may be shit, but you still got the operative chops."

He pocketed his cell phone - which he never turned on - and fixed her with a stern look. That was a compliment, but Mystique somehow didn't make it sound like one. "It's the oldest trick in the book. Make them dismiss you as a threat instantly and get close. The only skill in it is acting like a total idiot."

"And you do that wonderfully." She grinned, showing off perfect teeth. But the grinned died so fast he was sure it was never genuine. "Was that Vogel?"

"No. And from what I could see of the guy's face, he was too young. He hadn't had plastic surgery; he was just twenty years behind Vogel."

She nodded, glancing up the street. "I didn't get a good look at the other guy from my vantage point. But it must be him."

"Who were you?"

She jerked her head down the opposite way. "Homeless woman looking for bottles in the trash can."

He nodded, recalling seeing the woman as he left the coffee shop. That was excellent cover. Just about every urban dweller dismissed homeless people out of hand, especially the truly sad sack bag ladies. It was like the guilt and the pity hurt too much to look at them for too long. "I guess our next move is for me to get inside the Grand, so when he comes back, I can see if I can pick up his scent in the lobby."

She rolled her eyes. "It's gotta be him, Logan."

"I heard one of the Russians complaining that this was all needlessly paranoid. What if this is a double blind? What if they're both decoys and Vogel has stashed himself elsewhere, out of the city? Can we put that past him?"

She frowned and almost sneered. "You're the one being needlessly paranoid."

"You want to do this fast and sloppy, or do you want to do this right?"

She actually snarled, but it was more a reaction to the situation than to him. He hoped. "Fine. Do you have a way to get into the Grand?"

"Yeah, I think so."

She grabbed him by the collar and swung him around, so he was standing in front of her. For a second he got the bizarre idea she was either going to throw him through the window or kiss him (or both?), but really she was using his body as a shield from the street. The door behind her was made opaque by black crepe, hung up in advance of Halloween. She still had a hold of his collar as she morphed out of her current form, bleeding into the form of a solid looking Hispanic woman in a white and blue maid's uniform. "I can get us into the hotel."

"One that doesn't involve violence?"

She grinned savagely. "Are you gonna be a dick about this?"

He removed her hands from his collar, and said, "Yes. I'll get in in my own way. Remember - don't hurt civilians."

"Hurt? You said kill. I get to hurt some of 'em, or it doesn't work."

"We're not arguing this. You're a master of subterfuge; you don't need to brute force it all the time. And if you want me in that hotel to confirm Vogel's identity, you'll play by my rules."

Her eyes glittered like broken glass. "Do you really think you won't pay for this?"

"I'm sure I will. But let's discuss it later."

"Discuss isn't the word," she said icily, and then slipped aside and walked across the street to the Grand. Yeah, discuss was probably the wrong verb.

His plan was very loose, but he thought it might have a chance of working. He went a couple of blocks over to a high end thrift store - it said it had "vintage clothing", which meant that the prices on old crap was marked up for no reason whatsoever. He went in and bought some nice clothes that he thought he could live with for a while, and called Faith while he changed in the small fitting room. He'd already bought them, then asked the clerk if he could change in the back. She looked at him really funny, but she said okay, although she stared after him like he might be a serial killer.

He asked Faith if she had a credit card he could charge a room to, as he had no credit cards. He had no actual, legal form of identification at all. That was the problem when you had no fixed address (well, he supposed he could call the mansion his home now), no full name, no birth certificate. He had a Canadian driver's license, but it was a quality fake; he rotated last names chosen at random, picked for their general innocuousness and commonality. He supposed he could make up information, it was unlikely anyone would check it, but he didn't like the idea of someone being able to track him with financial information. Okay, yeah, that was probably paranoia, but by now he couldn't help it. Leaving a paper trail just made him feel like he was asking for it.

After asking why he needed a credit card he told her, and she told him to wait a minute. He took the opportunity to finish changing clothes, and on his way out of the shop he shoved his other clothes in a donation box. When Faith got back on, he was walking back towards the Grand. She told him that Tony was calling the Grand now to say he had dispatched a person on his behalf to reserve a suite for him so it would be ready as soon as his plane landed. Now Tony wasn't in a plane, he was at his Vancouver home, but the staff wouldn't know this, and as soon as he confirmed Logan was his emissary, they'd run around like panicky ants getting everything ready for him. Using Tony's name would guarantee he could park his ass in the lobby all damn day and no one would hassle him. It was perfect.

He asked Faith what she'd told Tony about wanting the room, and she said she'd simply said that he needed it for this "thing" he was working on. That was it. Which probably meant that Tony's guilt about using him against the Yakuza and the Triad was still in full effect. And good, he should still feel bad about that. He supposed he should forgive him at some point, but he wasn't sure when. He was probably being a brat - he wasn't the first person to use him, and frankly what he did wasn't all that bad - but he honestly thought Tony was better than that. But, again, no one ever made a billion dollars being nice all the time.

He added the hat to the donation bin, and tucked his sunglasses in his pocket. He checked in a mirror in the thrift shop, just to make sure his facial hair hadn't grown back yet. It hadn't, but it took a moment for him to recognize himself. He did look different - and for some reason, he _really_ didn't like it. His face looked too open, too fragile somehow, his eyes seemed to take up too much space, and it just unnerved him. But it was a perfect way of hiding in plain sight, because no one would recognize him.

The inside of the Pacific Grand's marble tiled lobby was just as pretentiously elegant as the Ashford's, and he passed the biggest vase - no, technically he supposed it was an urn now, although not the kind you used for remains (unless you cremated an entire village and needed a monstrous urn to jam them all in) - he'd ever seen, filled with a flower arrangement so large it was bigger than him, and he felt the urge to turn and flee. He wasn't sure why, except he always felt painfully out of place whenever ostentatious wealth was displayed.

Tony was good at his word. He was on the phone with a good looking Asian kid behind the front desk, who looked like a refugee from an '80's ska band with his dark suit, skinny dark tie, and crisp white dress shirt. Logan confirmed he was Tony's messenger, Tony confirmed his identity on the phone, and the kid started falling over himself to serve him. The kid just decided to give Tony the "Presidential Suite", which was the huge room on the top floor that actually took up the entire floor, and Logan watched, amused, as all the staff started bustling about.

He took a seat on a curved, honey colored velvet sofa, and started actually reading the newspaper while keeping the corner of his eye on the front doors. At one point, while swapping sections of the newspaper, he saw the ska kid disappear into the back, but he returned almost immediately, moving to the computer and doing something on it, his hands flying across the keyboard. There was something different simply in the cadence of the typing that made him look up, and at the same time the kid looked up and met his eyes.

It wasn't the kid.

It was the look in the eye. The kid was strangely, genuinely cheerful - maybe he was already dreaming of the massive tip - but while his polite smile was pasted on, the eyes didn't reflect the smile. They were rather cold, actually, and he was sure he recognized the look: Mystique. She must have known he recognized her, because as soon as she was finished doing whatever she was doing at the computer (probably accessing the guest registration files, trying to figure out which was Vogel), she blew him a kiss.

There was an overweight, pale man in a rumpled suit approaching the front desk, and he turned to see who the clerk was gesturing at, and when he saw it was Logan, a look of shock and naked disgust crossed his face. That instantly pissed Logan right off, so he blew Mystique a sarcastic kiss right back. That made her grin so broadly that it threatened to split her entire head in half, and then she disappeared into the back. Logan glanced back at the businessman, and gave him a look that promised a hard, cold death.

All the blood drained from his face, and as he turned to the counter he managed to trip over his own feet; it seemed to take him a moment to find his voice. Good. He hated those fucking judgmental bastards.

The real kid came back, cheerful and busy, and didn't seem to understand why the businessman was looking at him askance. Logan made a mental note to get Tony to leave him a nice tip.

He'd gotten done with the Toronto paper and moved on to the Montreal one when he heard suddenly, "Darling, there you are!" He looked up to see a slim brunette in a clingy brown dress standing right in front of him. She leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek, and then sat beside him, holding his hand. "Tony's not here yet?"

"No." As soon as he was certain no one was paying attention to him, he whispered, "What the fuck are you doing, Mystique?"

She leaned in close, and whispered, "Did you really think I was going to sit this one out?"

Logan sighed wearily. "I was hopin'. Find what you wanted on the computer?"

"I downloaded the guest lists to a flash drive, including pending charges to the rooms. We might be able to figure out who Vogel is that way."

"By seeing who's drinking the most vodka? Calling the kitchen and asking for borsch?"

She gave him a brief, cutting glance. Her eyes were the same brown as her hair and her dress - apparently it was a theme. "Aren't you too old to be a smart ass? By the way, loved the kiss. Did you see the look on that fucker's face?"

"Yeah. I hate assholes like that. We're all human, we all hurt and bleed and die, and yet some people insist on these bullshit divisions and bullshit reasons to hate each other."

"I agree. There's good reason to hate people. They're mucking it up." She smiled slowly, slyly. "And some of us don't die and stay dead, now do we?"

She had to bring that up, didn't she? He gave her a sour frown that only made her smile more. "Since we got the time, why don't you tell me what the fuck actually happened between us and Vogel?"

That made her stop smiling, and she shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "You're guessing."

"It's an educated guess. You tipped your hand back in your hotel room. So what the fuck did this guy do to us? I want an answer, darlin', or I stop playin'."

"Is that the only threat you have?"

"No, but it seems to be the best one."

She sighed, and gave him a look that suggested separating his head from his neck would be much more enjoyable. But she looked away, at the huge urn and flower display, and needlessly smoothed out her dress as she crossed her legs. (She was her dress - why smooth it?) "I don't know all your story, just pieces."

"It's more than I got."

She took a minute to gather her thoughts, or maybe concoct a story. He'd have to figure out which. "Vogel, as part of his government work, worked at this prison in Russia that was known as the Abattoir, because so many violent criminals were sent there, and so many killed each other. The wardens didn't honestly care; the animals ripping themselves to pieces were doing them a favor as far as they were concerned. You can probably still find pages about it on Amnesty International's website. Vogel was supposedly using them in a genetic search for criminality, searching their genomes to find a common factor. But he was also conducting some heinous medical experiments on the prisoners, with the quiet blessing of the wardens and the government. It wasn't like they were going to see the light of day again; it wasn't like they hadn't already been dismissed as trash of the most toxic kind. No one gave a shit about them, or how horribly they died.

"And that's where you met Vogel."


	4. Chapter 4

4

"You're telling me I was in a Russian prison?" Logan repeated, still not sure if this was true or a lie. "Why?"

"Supposedly you were Alexei Ivanov - the Russian equivalent of John Smith - who was convicted of a brutal triple murder outside Moscow. I don't know if the whole story was a plant or if the Organization took an existing man and put you in his place, but they wanted you in that prison to get close to Vogel. At this time, I don't think anyone knew the details of Overlord beyond Vogel. You were supposed to get his attention, and you did."

He was almost afraid to ask. "How?"

"How do you think? You were attacked by some of the biggest guys in the prison - of course; you were new meat - and you sent them all to the medical ward for body casts. Even though they were brutal fights and you were usually covered in blood, you never seemed to have a scratch on you."

"Huh. Wonder how that happened."

"It's a puzzler, isn't it? You became the new badass of the cellblock, and there were rumors you were some kind of freak. And Vogel loved him some freaks."

Logan grunted. That sounded like something the Organization would do - send him into the lion's den and leave him to fend for himself amongst the predators until he could hit their target. "As soon as he saw my genes, he must have freaked."

"He started freaking when he took blood samples from you. Your blood didn't go bad, you know. You could leave it out and it wouldn't start drying up or thickening; it would just stay as is, its own self-contained system, staying viable against the odds. You didn't need to be a geneticist to know that wasn't right."

"Guess not." He looked at his hand, and tried to visualize the blood pounding through his veins underneath the skin. He'd heard before it had odd properties - Jean had once mentioned almost casually that he seemed to have his own blood type - but it was sort of creepy to think about. Wonder blood. Something that wanted to keep on going whether he wanted to or not. "Where do you come into this?"

"He had an assistant named Vladimir Federov. Or at least he did, before I killed and replaced him."

"Nice."

"You knew it was me. I didn't know how, but this was before we discovered you had a sense of smell more sensitive than a bloodhound's. But you never gave me away. You just looked at me like you knew who I really was when Vogel wasn't paying any attention. And then once, when I was closing up the lab after Vogel had left the room, you said, in English, _"Goodnight, Mystique". _Major giveaway there, huh?"

He puzzled briefly over the change of nouns. "His lab was at the prison?"

"Not his main one, no. As soon as he discovered you were the freak of his dreams, he used all his pull in the politburo to arrange your transfer to a prison that only existed on paper. That was his main lab."

Logan suddenly had a bad feeling he knew where this was going. "He used me as a guinea pig, didn't he?"

"Of course he did. Where else was he going to find a subject as perfect as you?"

Yeah, his mutation made him the wet dream of mad scientists everywhere. But he started getting angry as he realized how some of this must have played out. "You helped torture me, didn't you?"

She had the decency to grimace as she looked away, avoiding his eyes. "I had no choice. I was his assistant, and I had to play the part. If it means anything at all, I hated doing it. I may not have liked you very much, but I hated torturing a fellow mutant for the sick pleasure of a demented normal."

"So why didn't you do anything about it?"

"For the same reason you just took it when you could've popped your claws and ended it all at any time. We had a mission."

Mission. Fuck, he hated that word. It excused a variety of monstrous things:_ "I was only following orders,"/"I had a mission to complete." _All easy bullshit that was used to excuse a multitude of atrocities.

He flexed his hands restlessly, really wanting to ask her what the fuck she was thinking and how bad it got, but there was no way he could have such an outburst in a hotel lobby around so many witnesses. They were on another "mission", after all. Fuck.

"So what did he do to you?" Logan asked, as he hadn't figured that out yet.

"What do you mean? I had to help him with his anti-mutant bullshit. Isn't that bad enough?"

"For you? No. Sorry darlin', but it was something a lot worse than that."

She looked back at him with narrowed eyes and a wicked scowl. "Why do you think you're so smart when everyone knows you're not?"

That just made him smirk. Did she think that would hurt him? He had pretty thick skin, and he'd never claimed to be smart. Geniuses probably had stuff like memories, or at least knew why they knew certain things. "I'm a dumb shit in most things, but I'm smart where it counts. And I know someone hurtin' me, normal or not, wouldn't piss you off so much. So what did?"

He noticed her leg was twitching, and she crossed them again, now aimed the other way. She shifted, pointed away from him, and from body language alone he knew she wasn't going to tell him.

Instead of waiting for an answer that wouldn't come, he asked, "Why didn't you just kill Vogel as soon as you knew what Overlord was?" That was her M.O. after all - there was no difference to Mystique between a sneeze or killing someone. She could do both just as easily, and they bothered her just the same.

"Because it wasn't that easy to find out. This asshole was totally paranoid, to the point where even being his assistant didn't guarantee me access. He wrote notes in a kind of code, and worked on Overlord alone. It seems he once had a colleague steal his research, so now he treated it like it was gold."

And his paranoia continued to this day. It explained a lot about him. It also might make him a slightly harder target, although really it just meant they might have to kill more people - or at least that was probably Mystique's aim. What's a few more dead bodyguards, especially if they're only mobsters? He just knew he never should have gotten involved in this.

They sat in tense silence for several moments, and since he knew Mystique wasn't going to answer his questions about her, he started reading the Montreal newspaper. He noticed her looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and finally he muttered, "What?"

"So you read French too? You're so Canadian."

Using the paper as cover, he flipped her the bird, and it made her laugh.

This was the assignment from hell, waiting with Mystique in a posh hotel lobby. It was awful to think he'd rather be crouched in some cold, muddy woods, waiting for hours in the wet, chill silence, than here, but it was true. He was such a curmudgeon.

Finally, after an interminable amount of time, black suited thugs started filing into the lobby, doing a brief perimeter sweep before hustling their charge straight into the elevator. Once again, it was impossible to see him through the wall of men, but as Logan parsed the scents, separating out the familiar chemical elements, he caught a hint of … something familiar. He couldn't place it, but he didn't like it.

Mystique must have known the look on his face. "It's him, isn't it?"

"I think so, yeah."

She stood up, but he grabbed her arm and yanked her back down. "No, not yet."

She ripped her arm out of his grasp and gave him a lethal scowl. "Don't tell me what to do."

He glanced at the elevator, and asked, "I think the elevator stopped at the eighth floor, didn't it?"

Although still clearly pissed off, her eyes cut towards the elevator, where a few of the Russian mob guys still loitered, in no hurry to go and do whatever the hell they had to do next. Maybe force some teenagers smuggled in from the Ukraine to become sex slaves - the Russian mob did a lot of sex trafficking, didn't they? It was becoming more profitable than drugs for them, which was totally fucking sad. What was even more pathetic was the growing market for sex slaves. "Yeah, I think so. Let's go up there and end this."

"Did you see how many of the mob guys went with him?"

Her eyes narrowed, and her irises briefly flared yellow. "Come on, old man, you've taken out entire battalions single handedly. Getting scared in your old age?"

"Bullets, sweetheart. Yeah, they ain't gonna hurt me much, but they could hurt you, and anyone else on the floor with Vogel, or above or below, since bullets are known for their ricochets. Then there's the little matter of how fast the cops will respond to shots fired in a good hotel. This ain't Chinatown."

"So you're scared of cops now."

"No, but shouldn't you be, Miss Number One on the FBI's Most Wanted List?"

She scoffed dismissively, but looked away. "They can't catch me or hold me."

"Doesn't matter. As soon as word gets out where you are, you're up shit creek and you know it. We don't rush this. You have the guest list, right? Let's look it over and see if we can figure out which room he's in, and let's surveil him. Let's find out where he has this toxin - there's no fucking way he's keeping it with him - and let's find out who's coming out to buy it."

Finally she looked back at him, a small smile starting to creep across her face. "Nail them all, you mean? Wow, old man, I underestimated you. I thought you'd become domesticated."

"I ain't sayin' we kill them all. I say we find out who we're dealing with. And if we can find out along the way who's financing this fuckhead, even better."

"It's the mob."

"Is it? Why? What do the mob need with a geneticist?"

She glanced down at the expensive floor and scratched the side of her neck, thinking about it. For the first time? This was not like her at all - she was completely off her game. Yeah, she was a psycho bitch, but she always did her homework. What had Vogel done to her? Did he discover she wasn't really Vladimir Federov and hurt her? "He might function as an underground doctor for them."

"He might. But it's a waste of his specialty." The rest of the lingering mobsters split into three groups: some went up in the elevator, another group started going up the stairs (used only for emergencies and by staff, but a good place to hide if you were, say, an assassin), and the rest left the hotel, perhaps to engage in a final perimeter sweep.

Logan folded up the newspapers and returned them to the glass topped, low slung table in front of the sofa, Mystique studying him curiously all the while. "What?" he finally asked, mildly irritated.

"You have a hunch," she said. "Share."

"How d'ya know that?"

"You went away in your eyes, and you smirked slightly. Giveaways, old man."

That was fair enough. He thought he had a better poker face than that, but then again, he wasn't used to having his mouth and jaw line so exposed. "I don't have a hunch, not really. Just a … feeling."

"What kind of feeling?"

"The only kind I have," he sighed. "Bad."

But that probably went for this whole damn thing.

* * *

They found a café closer to the grittier side of town, and Mystique got a laptop and plugged in the flash drive so they could go over the guest files. He had no idea where she got the laptop, but it didn't smell like blood, so he took that as some encouragement. She'd also changed her appearance to that of a rather average looking Asian male, perhaps to fit the population demographic around here better, or maybe just because she could.

While she worked, he took a moment to call Faith and tell her what was going on. Although Mystique made a noise that could only be interpreted as an allusion to him being "pussy whipped", the truth is he was doing it for her: Faith said if she didn't hear from him within a few hours, she'd assume Mystique double crossed him and left him to die somewhere, forcing her to hunt down her blue ass and beat it to pulp for hurting her man. Which actually made him feel a little warm and fuzzy.

He stood far enough away from Mystique that she couldn't eavesdrop, but he kept her and the laptop monitor in sight. He gave Faith the briefest summary of what Mystique had told him about him and Vogel. "Do you believe it?" Faith wondered.

He thought about it for a moment. "It's plausible. It sounds like something the Organization would do."

"Yeah, well, punching kittens sounds like something they could do, but it doesn't mean they did. Mystique's gotta know that as much as we do."

"Yeah, I know."

"Is there any way we can get info that will either support or refute her story?"

"You got Marc's number? If there's anything to be found, he'll find it."

"How does he find this shit out?"

"Got me. I don't ask, mainly 'cause I don't want to be a knowing accessory to somethin'."

"Smart."

Logan noticed, through the smoked glass of the café's front window, one of the Russian mob guys getting into a mild verbal argument with another guy outside the deli across the street. They were actually close to the Russian part of town, so he wasn't surprised to see some on the street - a lot of these mob guys probably lived around here. "We're prob'ly gonna do some recon, so I'll check in with you in a couple of hours."

"Hey - why can't I come along? You're acing me out here."

"Well, they're not likely to notice me or Mystique following them, but a hot chick? Oh yeah."

"You did that on purpose, you bastard. You had to throw in a compliment that I can't argue with."

"I'm a sneaky bastard."

The argument had grown slightly louder, and Logan looked out the window just in time to see the Russian mobster grab the guy by the arm and suddenly lift him up in the air and throw him down on the top of a parked Mitsubishi. The windows exploded as the roof collapsed, making the car crumple like a tin can around his body due to the force used. The mobster walked away, working out a crick in his neck, as the guy with the car wrapped around him just laid there, most likely dead, every bone in his body broken.

"Holy shit," the café counter guy blurted. "Did you just see that?"

They both did. He and Mystique shared a knowing, concerned look. They'd just confirmed that the Russian mafia had mutants working for them, and they were guarding Vogel.

Son of a bitch.


	5. Chapter 5

5

He actually left the first round of reconnaissance to Mystique. They agreed on a meeting place and time, and she was under the impression he was meeting up with Faith. But he'd lied.

This was far from Logan's first time in Vancouver, and he knew some things about the city. Like the locations of all the seedy bars where no one asked a lot of questions, where you could pick up work that was semi-legal at best, and who was the person you needed to see when you wanted information.

The guy Logan went to see was a man called "Lucky", who seemed to have a permanent stool at the end of the bar at Hancock's, a dive bar on one of the piers that tourists never went to, mainly because they valued their lives. The place reeked of cheap beer, vomit, and piss, which barely covered up the smell of rotting kelp outside. It was like permanent night inside, the neon beer signs barely offering enough illumination to see if the bartender spit in your glass or not. It was not a happy place to be; indeed, it seemed like the last stop before death. If the despair didn't kill you, one of the patrons would.

Lucky had earned his nickname because he had been shot in the face but survived with nothing more than a livid pink scar on his left cheek, and been attacked with a machete and survived with only three missing fingers. Logan actually thought it was bad luck that he'd been shot in the face and attacked with a machete, but logic didn't seem to apply here.

If Lucky had a job, it must have been informing, because he never seemed to do anything or go anywhere. Much like Barney on The Simpson's, if Hancock's was open, Lucky was here, keeping his stool warm. He was a pale, doughy man with stringy hair held back in a loose, greasy ponytail, with a face like a crowbar: thin enough that it looked edged, and his nose had been broken so many times it looked too thin for his face. Logan could smell his body odor the moment he came in the door, so he dug out a cigar and lit it, using the smoke to block the smell. He still wore the same old ratty tan trench coat he'd always worn, but his face had a sprinkling of fresh acne across it, making the scar looked puckered and fresh. Meth? Probably. Meth addicts usually had bad acne and bad teeth, and a strangely chemical reek to their body odor.

Logan took the bar stool next to his, and as the big, bald bartender approached, he threw a ten dollar bill on the scarred bar top, and said, "Bring me a decent beer, and give my friend another of whatever's he's having."

The bartender, who was missing his eyebrows (flaming brandy gone horribly wrong?) gave him an odd, dead eyed look, but took the money and went to get the drinks. Lucky stared at him curiously for several seconds before placing the face. "Fuckin' ay, is that you Logan? You've shaved."

His stubble was starting to come back in, but slowly. "Had to sometime."

"Haven't seen you in like forever. Figured you ran into somethin' you couldn't beat."

Logan shrugged as the bartender came back with their drinks and pissed off again. There was a low murmur of the CBC news from the distant corner, but the screen was so small and grimy almost no one could see it even if they wanted to pay attention to it. "Sure, but I'm still here. Need some info."

"Lookin' for a job? ID?"

"Not this time. I need to know what place the Russian mafia calls home base these days."

Lucky turned to him, bug eyed, and grabbed his sleeve, yanking him close enough that he could smell the decay and acidic scent of meth beneath his general whiskey breath scent. "Are you fuckin' nuts? The Russians? There are easier ways to commit suicide, man."

Logan yanked his arm out of his grasp and sat back, taking a puff of his cigar so his eyes didn't look like they were watering from his stink. "Ain't your concern. I just need to know where they call home."

He scoffed and shook his head. "And if they find out where the info came from -"

"They won't," Logan held up his hand as he reached for his beer, flashing him the folded twenty he had palmed. "Gonna tell me, Lucky?"

Twenty was actually pretty cheap, but Lucky was happy to accept any two digit denomination; he'd have settled for ten. He licked his dry, cracked lips nervously, almost colorless, bloodshot eyes briefly flicking around the darkened bar before leaning in and whispering, "There's this private club on the east side, known only as the Tea Room, but you won't see any signs on it. It's like this old apartment building that looks like it's been converted into a storage facility. It's really like the social club for the Ruskies. Only people who know about it can get in. There's a brothel in it, supposedly, but not one that they share with your average joes."

Probably because the girls were all under age, spoke no English, and probably had no idea where the fuck they were. Just thinking about it made Logan angry. "Where on the East Side?"

"Know George Street?"

"Yeah."

"Take it all the way down 'til you reached this burned out liquor store. There's an unmarked side street - it's really McCormack Avenue, but all the signs are gone - and if you take the street all the way down, you'll find it. It's red brick, and in spite of all the run down places near it, the sidewalks are surprisingly neat."

"Well, this is Canada."

"Yeah, but that area's the pits. It's like America or something."

Yes, Canadian chauvinism existed. But it seemed extra funny coming from a meth-head who probably hadn't showered in three days. Logan slid him the twenty discreetly, and took a swig of his beer. It was lukewarm and vaguely disgusting, which was par for the course with Hancock's. "Thanks, Lucky. Nobody will know I was here."

He snorted. "Not when they fish you out of the bay, no."

"Have a little more faith in me. I was just curious, that's all." A blatant lie, and Lucky looked at him like he knew it, but he wasn't about to comment on it. Logan took a final swig of his beer and then left it on the bar, sure that Lucky would finish it off.

Once outside, he walked to a better part of the neighborhood and hailed a cab, getting it to take him to the end of George Street. He told the driver, an agreeable Rastafarian named Hugo who swore he "looked familiar" (_"You been on t.v., dude? You an actor?") _to come back for him in twenty minutes, and walked down the unnamed street and found what must have been "the Tea Room". There were no markings at all outside, and while there were windows on the ground floor (covered though they were with old fashioned blinds), there were no windows at all on the upper floors. Bricked over? Probably. There was the burned shell of an abandoned building across the street, so he hid in it for a while and watched the building. There wasn't a lot of activity, but he doubted there would be. There would probably be a bit more action later on, when it started getting dark, and the mobsters decided to relax with a little gambling and whoring.

A little reconnaissance showed there were only two exits on the ground floor: the front door and the back. People could technically use the windows, but the big macho men with guns rarely did.

He eventually walked back to George Street, and Hugo showed up a few minutes early, full of questions about what movies he'd been in. He assured him he hadn't been in any movies, he was mistaking him for someone else, but Logan secretly feared he'd seen video of him fighting on YouTube or in some sort of X-Men news footage. Eventually, weary of the third degree, he borrowed a credit from Kier and claimed he'd once been on the X-Files. That made Hugo happy - _"Oh yeah! That's where I saw you!" - _and went on to ask which episode and what he was in. He didn't actually know what Kier's role had been, so Logan just said he'd been an alien in that one where they were plotting an invasion, a description so bland it could have applied to any one of a dozen X-Files episodes. But once again, Hugo was happy to volunteer that he remembered that and he was _"really creepy", _which he took as a kind of compliment. Luckily he had reached his destination before he had to answer the _"So what's Gillian Anderson really like?" _question.

He and Mystique had agreed to meet outside a dockside gay nightclub that didn't open until nine, so they were alone, and it was unlikely that any Russian mafia guy would ever admit being anywhere near here. (There were gays in the mafia - but they never admitted it for fear of being killed. The macho culture was no place to admit being different.) Still, sticking to the gay theme, Mystique showed up in the guise of a rather stereotypical twink, a lean but athletic man wearing a tight pink t-shirt that showed off a lean stomach, and two hundred dollar (simulated) jeans so tight they looked painted on and showed off both a sculpted ass and a sizable bulge. Her hair was short and spiky platinum blond, streaked with cotton candy blue, and she appeared to be wearing a diamond nose stud. "Sweetie!" she said, grabbing him and giving him a hug. "Where have you been?"

"Do you know how offensively stereotypical you're being?" he grumbled.

She feigned a limp slap on his shoulder. "God! Stereotypes exist for a reason, you know! Maybe the gay guys you know aren't flaming, but I can show you where those who are gather in flocks like high pitched geese. They can't all be Marc, now can they?" She then grinned and showed off teeth so white he felt like he needed to avert his eyes to avoid being blinded.

He shook his head. "Yer a piece of work."

"I'll take that as a compliment. Now lovey, have you shaken your fag hag?"

She was enjoying this far too much. "What did you find out?"

She shrugged, surreptitiously looking around to make sure they were alone. They were, save for some crows and seagulls looking through whatever litter Humans had left behind for anything edible. "Nothing much. They seem to be leaning on some businesses near Chinatown for protection money, the usual penny ante bullshit."

"I know where these guys go to unwind. It's called the Tea Room, it's a few miles from here, and I wanna hit it tonight."

She quirked up a seemingly sculpted eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Logan Yashida's gonna show up and tear it to pieces. Wanna join me?"

She gave him a half smile that was razor blade sharp and evil enough to give him a faint chill. "What's your hurry? What tipped the scales?"

"It's a whorehouse. They probably got a bunch of teenagers in there. I wanna get them out."

She chuckled faintly. "Oh, there's that sentimentality teaming up with your estrogen weakness. You know Mr. Patriarchy, not all women are damsels in distress needing saving."

He fixed her with an evil glare. "I know that. But considering the mob's reputation for sex trafficking, I doubt any of them are there voluntarily."

She shrugged, unconcerned. "If they were stupid enough to get caught up in it -"

"They're kids, Mystique. Those fuckers are fucking kids. You really wanna give them a pass on that?"

She sighed and shook her head. "You are _so_ predictable. But shouldn't you hit it alone? We don't want them to know you have a partner in crime."

He'd actually thought of that while waiting for Mystique to show up, and he had what he thought was a brilliant idea. "What if the guy helping me appeared to be one of their own? As soon as word got out that someone had flipped and was working with Yashida, it'd freak everyone out. They'll start turning on each other, become ultra paranoid, and help us tear them down."

She grinned savagely. "Wow old man, you and I think alike sometimes."

"Gee, thanks. And here I was just startin' to feel good about myself again."

"I doubt that." There must have been no one around, as she morphed from the flamboyantly gay man to a thick necked Russian mobster much like those they saw today, in a long black coat with severely slicked back dark blond hair. The most disturbing thing was the black sunglasses that grew out of her face, like they'd been hiding under her skin and just this moment resurfaced. "You know, if I do turn on my own, it'll be weird if I use less than deadly force."

"We need to keep some alive so they can tell the others. But beyond that … go nuts." He knew he'd probably regret saying that, but truth be told, all he wanted to do was get the girls out of there. He wasn't averse to using deadly force if they tried to stop him.

Seeing her joyless, predatory grin on a mobster's face was deeply creepy. For a moment, it looked like her teeth turned into fangs. "Sounds like a party."

Actually it sounded like a slaughter. But he supposed he should be used to that by now.

* * *

It would have been better to hit the place at full dark, but he was impatient to get this started. So was Mystique since he told her she could take the gloves off, although she hardly needed his permission - she'd have probably killed anyways. But now she got to do it in front of him, aware he couldn't throw a hissy fit about it, and that made her itchy to do it.

Barely an hour after they discussed it, Mystique drove them to the unnamed street, and parked several meters away from the Tea Room, so any stray gunfire wouldn't hit the car. Logan didn't think it was a rental, although he doubted Mystique would pony up the dough for a Lexus, so he presumed it was stolen. He just hoped she stole it from a lot and didn't kill a person over it, but knowing her, there was no point in doing it if she couldn't kill someone in the process.

They walked up to the Tea Room, Mystique leading the way since she was supposedly the mafia thug, and he tried to figure out how many people were waiting for them inside by smell. It was really difficult to do on a city street where there had been lots of foot and car traffic - scents overlapped one another, fresh ones bleeding all over older ones, and he was able to separate out and identify at least three dozen different people, but he couldn't say for sure if they were all inside or not. It'd just have to be a surprise.

The door was locked, so Mystique rapped on the door, hard enough that it rattled in the frame. A tiny metal window in the door was retracted, and an eye looked out at Mystique. Logan himself stood against the wall on the far side of the door so he couldn't be seen from such a narrow vantage point. "Who are you?" a voice asked in Russian.

"Federov," Mystique responded, her voice almost a perfect mimic of his, just slightly lower in pitch. "We got a problem. I need to see the boss."

"What kind of problem?"

"Logan Yashida." There was no reaction, so she said, "The boss will know what it means. Tell him."

The window slammed shut, and she stood there, hands in the pocket of her coat, waiting. She didn't once break character and look at him. Finally there was a noise of locks being undone, and the door was opened. Mystique grabbed the door's watchmen by the throat and twisted it at a hard angle, the bones in his neck crackling like firewood, and as his body sagged, she reached under his jacket and pulled out his handgun. She let him go and flattened against the wall as others inside reacted, opening fire, and Logan lunged in the door, popping his claws, a couple of bullets punching into him as he ran for the gunmen, claws slicing the air before they sliced into metal and flesh, the men yelling for back up before screaming in pain, the one with the severed fingers falling away as he kicked the standing man in the stomach. He went flying into another man, and they both fell to the floor as more shots rang down the narrow entrance foyer. The bullets were like bee stings, little annoyances, sharp bursts of brief pain that faded as his adrenaline kicked in, and Mystique shot back, narrowly missing him but hitting an approaching gunman square in the face, blowing his brains all over the man coming up behind him.

Although the foyer was narrow, it eventually widened out into the bar/gambling den, so Logan had some room to move. The problem was, so did the guys responding to him, and now there were more, boiling out of back rooms like angry insects, firing and barking out orders in Russian.

Logan just let his mind go, entered a kind of Zen space where he simply let his body do what it was trained to do: hurt, kill, as efficiently as possible. Without thinking to get in the way, he was faster, and he noticed the pain of the bullets less. He slashed limbs, faces, reduced guns to shrapnel that fell on the floor with the sound of ball bearings pelting from the sky.

Mystique remained far behind him, using the shelter of doorways and him to hide from bullets and occasionally leaning out to fire, the bullets always dangerously close to him but never hitting him, always hitting their target instead. She'd plucked guns from the fallen and now had a small arsenal, discarding weapons as she used up the ammo, a weapon in each hand like a hero in a John Woo film.

Sometimes he opted for crippling injuries over slashing. He stomped on the side of knees, shattering legs, throwing elbows that shattered noses and sent men falling to the floor in paroxysms of pain. Some of the guys were harder to take down than others, the old mob warhorses who had been hurt a thousand ways and yet still kept coming, a stab wound to the gut or a few missing fingers not enough to discourage them. He slashed them in the face, taking off bits, kicked them in the stomach hard enough to rupture organs, or, worse case scenario, Mystique simply shot them, and she didn't shoot to wound.

Eventually they cut their way to the back room, and Logan was dimly aware that he felt like he was burning, his healing factor kicking into overdrive, bullets dropping out of his healing body like rotten teeth. Splattered with blood, gore dripping from his extended claws, his eyes empty of everything but incoherent rage, the mafia guys started finally reeking of fear. But it didn't stop them from trying to fight.

They got smart enough to try and swarm him, but that brought them into close quarters, which is where he excelled. He slashed open stomachs, blood splattering the floor and entrails poking out of deep gashes, point blank bullets ricocheting off adamantium bones and punching through the gunmen or their friends as the only noise became screams of pain and the wet noise of flesh being torn open, along with the dull explosions of bullets.

He cleared a path to the stairs, where Logan found a full cadre of gunmen shoulder to shoulder, waiting for him on the upper riser. Looking down at him, one of them demanded, "Why are you doing this?"

Thinking up a response would have required him to come back to himself, but luckily it didn't matter, as Mystique came to stand behind him, using him as a Human shield while aiming both guns up at them. "Justice," she said cryptically. That was so far from the truth it was incredible … or was it? Honestly he'd have to come back to himself to think about it, and he didn't want to. It smelled like a charnel house in here, bloody and raw, cordite stinging his eyes, and he knew if he came back to himself he would be horrified by the slaughter. This was what Weapon X was; this is what Stryker insisted he always was; this is what made Mystique seek him out and made her smile like they were old friends. An animal, a killer, a monster to be feared by both night and day.

So he was glad he didn't come back to himself. Sometimes there was nothing more merciful than auto-pilot.

With a roar of unfocused rage, he tore up the stairs, through a hail of stinging bullets, and lunged at the gunmen.


	6. Chapter 6

6

He didn't remember much about the fight up the stairs. When he left himself, when he let his instincts take over, he seemed to invite the blank spaces into his mind. His mind didn't want to create memories, or simply rejected the possibility outright. All he had were fleeting images, sensations: bones being broken, blood spilling warm over his hand, the taste of cordite in the back of his throat. Logan could remember the hits, the slashes, the kicks; his body retained the memory of the fight, he could feel it, but the images were lacking.

He came back to himself upstairs, in a narrow corridor, breathing hard and feeling a bullet wound heal in his face. He wasn't sure what had spurred him back to himself at first, but then he realized it was the smell: old fear, with new fear layered on top of it. It was hard to smell over all the blood and death, but once he'd scented it he couldn't not smell it anymore.

He'd found the kids.

There were locks on the doors, easily slashed through, and most had heard the sounds of a fight and had hidden in their squalid rooms, but when he found his voice - and it took a moment; when his reason shut down, it took his voice with it - he stood in the hall and said to all the open doors, "The police will be showing up soon. You can stay and go with them, or you can go now. I won't hurt you, and they can't hurt you anymore."

He started walking away, because he knew they'd be terrified of him. Who wouldn't be? Blood covered monster, like something that crawled out of the darkest part of a madman's psyche. He was at the head of the stairs when a small voice said, in whispered Russian, "They said they'd kill my family."

It could have been a boy's voice or a girl's. And while they were mostly girls up here, he was pretty sure he caught a scent that could only be male, but not dosed with the usual pheromones; pre-pubescent. Young boys sold pretty well too, from what little he understood about this sick business. Age was often more important than gender. He didn't turn to look at the kid, mainly because he knew it was better if the kid never saw his face. He should remain a nightmare figure, something inhuman and slightly metallic and dripping blood that was mostly not his own. Let them tell the cops, who would instantly dismiss the description as a traumatized child's fantasy. "They won't. They'll be too busy trying to kill me. Your family is safe, because now I'm all they want." Which was partly true and partly a lie, as killing the family was usually no more than an idle threat, one used to keep the kids obedient and in line. They used narcotics on these kids for the very same reason.

He went back down the stairs, careful not to slip in all the blood, trying hard not to notice the scattered limbs or other obvious signs of dismemberment. Mystique was standing at the base of the stairs, still looking like a big Russian thug, holding two smoking guns, lightly bloodspattered and heavily smug. "Wow, old man, I thought the beast was gone," she said, in French. (Possibly because she assumed that the survivors who were conscious would speak Russian and possibly English, but probably not French.) "After I fought you and it didn't come out, I figured you were completely domesticated, that maybe Xavier leashed you. But the animal's still in there, huh?"

"I am not an animal," he snapped, briefly imagining kicking the gun out of one of her hands and planting a set of claws right in the middle of her face. He could see himself doing it; he could do it before she even had time to react.

Did she see it in his eyes? She leveled one of her weapons at him, and said, "You back yet?"

"I am." He thought if he could let go, he could beat her before she shot him in the eye; he could have her head in two neat pieces on the floor before the sound of the shot finished echoing through the building. But he shoved those thoughts back deep inside his mind, in a dark little corner where they wouldn't hurt anyone. He thought the "other" had been expunged, wiped out like the soul sucking demon it seemed to be, but the Organization had fucked his head over so well that it was probably impossible to totally rid himself of the Weapon X persona. If it was genuinely another persona, a trigger response. He feared it was really him, or at least some fragment of him, a piece broken and slightly apart from the rest of him. It must be, if Jean took out the "programmed" part, and he still had this beast in him. Mystique was right - it was a beast. He hoped it wasn't really him.

"Where do you go?" she asked, as she let him lead the way out of the slaughterhouse. She must have decided she wasn't going to turn her back on him. That was smart.

"What?" He knew what she was talking about, but he didn't want to acknowledged it.

"You went away in your head, didn't you? I didn't realize it at first because I was following you, but up on the stairs, I saw it in your eyes. It's like … your pupils were huge, like you just dropped E or something, although moving that fast it must have been speed. But there was something wrong with them. Something happens to your eyes when the beast comes out. I didn't know that. Did you?"

He didn't, but he wasn't going to tell her that, just like he wasn't going to tell her it looked like someone cut loose with a chainsaw in here. Once outside, he gratefully sucked in a lungful of air that didn't smell like blood, and swallowed back a brief surge of nausea that was probably psychosomatic more than anything. It made him think of Jean again, telling him he had post traumatic stress disorder, that willfully separating yourself from your body in your own mind was actually common amongst trauma victims. So maybe it wasn't a beast per se, just a wounded animal. That didn't actually make him feel any better.

Mystique complained about him getting blood all over her car, but he told her she should have planned for that since knife fights were often messy. He suddenly felt weary to the pit of his soul, and all he wanted to do was scour the scent of blood off his skin and go sleep for a few thousand years. She'd changed her appearance to that of a very bland, blonde "soccer mom" type, as he used a towel wedged under the passenger seat to get the most visible blood off his face, arms, and neck. He didn't need any onlookers thinking some blood soaked maniac was holding a helpless suburban mom hostage. (Of course, helpless his ass, but they probably wouldn't know that until she snapped their neck like a twig and laughed while doing it.)

He didn't want her to know where Faith lived - even though she could probably find out if she was willing to dig - so he had her drop her off a couple blocks over. He slunk into a back alley and took off his torn, bloody shirt and threw it in a Dumpster, glad he'd left his coat in the back of Mystique's car, so he could zip it up and wear it back to Faith's place. He was lucky that blood often appeared black on jeans.

When he walked in her place, she said, "Well, fuck man! I was about to go out and look for - oh shit. What happened?"

He shrugged, and felt oddly bad standing in front of her, like he was a piece of shit that didn't deserve to be in her presence. "I decided to let the mob know Logan Yashida was back in town."

She closed her eyes and shook her head like he was the stupidest person she'd ever met. Maybe he was. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"'Cause you'd want to come along. I don't want you to see me like that."

That made her look at him askance. "Like what?"

He didn't know how to describe it. What was the most honest thing to say? "Like Weapon X," he finally said, taking off his coat.

"You're not Weapon X anymore."

"I think a part of me always will be. I'm gonna take a shower. Sorry if I got blood on your floor." He shucked off what was left of his bloody clothes along the way, trying to put them in spots where they would do the least damage, noticing she had "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge" (ha) on the stereo and the television on mute, showing some scenes from a horror movie that looked cheesy enough that it was best shown without sound. Of course, now that they'd both fought real demons, all horror movie ones seemed cheesy.

He got the shower going as hard and hot as he could stand it, and stood under the spray, waiting for the water to batter away the blood and self-loathing. It didn't seem to be working.

Faith got in the shower with him, stepping in behind him, and said, "You're lucky I'm used to getting blood on my floor, bucko, or I'd have kicked your ass." She started soaping up his back, and then asked, "Ever thought about getting a tat?"

He almost laughed, but couldn't quite manage it. "I'm not sure I can get a tattoo. I think my system attacks the ink and eradicates it."

"So you don't get colds, but you can't get tattoos? Bummer." She probably brought it up because she had added to her own tattoo collection while off in Japan. On her right arm, she had small, artfully rendered kanjis that said in Japanese, _"I'll kick your ass"_. He thought that was so funny he wished he had that.

She was trying to distract him, he knew it, and he appreciated it. They washed off as much of the blood as possible before the hot water ran out (and it was sort of reassuring to know that it ran out even in an expensive place like this, even though it took forever to do it), and then went to bed, as he was still exhausted. They didn't have sex - he wasn't sure he could right now; self-loathing was a big mood killer - but she snuggled up next to him in bed, her body pressed up against his back, arms around his chest. It was very soothing, which she must have known, as she asked him again what happened, and he told her. Roughly. Again, there were those tricky memory gaps, many of them self-caused.

But when he told her about the kids, she said, "You should have brought Giles."

"Why?"

"So you could kill those mob bastards, he could resurrect them, and you could kill them again. One death ain't good enough for pieces of shit like that."

"We're so alike sometimes it's frightening."

"I know. But I have the better rack."

That made him laugh in spite of himself, which was surely her intention. "I'd hope so."

"Oh, you're jealous and you know it," she teased, giving him a kiss on the back of his neck. "You didn't run into that mutant guy?"

"No. Or any of them. I mean, if they have one, there will probably be others. I assume they'll be out in full force now."

"Let me take care of the Hulk, all right? I'm stronger than I should be too."

"Faith, he turned a car into a tin can. He's stronger than you."

"So? He won't be the first guy I've fought who's stronger than me. You ever fought a Draxil demon? Holy shit, they could throw a building at you - I mean literally pick it up and throw it. All you gotta do for these muscleheads is move in fast, hit the weak spots, and move out before they can grab you. Ain't easy, but it can be done."

That was really the only strategy you could use. "You should teach at the school."

"Fuck that noise. I don't teach, I only do."

"See? There's that alike thing again."

"But you have the better sideburns," she said, giggling faintly into his neck.

They were so perfect for each other they were doomed to failure. But it was bound to be a fun ride while it lasted.

* * *

He thought he'd be plagued by nightmares, but he wasn't. Maybe because his healing factor getting so taxed exhausted him, or maybe Faith helped, or maybe both. He didn't feel so bad when he woke up, though.

He was starving. Luckily Faith had a pretty good appetite too, and had ordered lots of food from the near by deli. As he joined her at the kitchen table, he saw the "mob massacre" had made the headlines. According to what police told the press, they thought it was an indication a mob war was either starting or had started. There was no mention of him or anyone who looked like him at all. Either they were holding it back, or they didn't believe the kids. There was no way any of the mob survivors would spill their guts to the cops. They'd tell their people, but that would be it.

She must have noticed the look on his face as he read it, because she said, "Think of them as a nest of demons, just in Human form. Did you see where they said one of the kids recovered from the scene was eight? Eight! Should have killed them three times."

Logan knew he had some right to feel justified, but he still didn't. "They're gonna be comin' after me hot and heavy now. I should probably find another place to stay."

"Fuck you. I got a kevlar vest. You're safest here."

"Safe doesn't really come into it, not for me. It's you and all the innocent bystanders I'm worried about."

She scoffed. "I think that's the first time I've been called innocent before."

"You know what I mean."

"I do, and it still doesn't apply to me." She picked up the newspaper, rolled it up, and poked him in the arm with it. "So where are we meeting the blue assed bimbo today?"

There was no talking her out of it now, although he would have liked to. After yesterday, he imagined she'd be his shadow.

Logan wore a baseball cap (although it was actually a Canucks hat) and black sunglasses, but he knew this was meager camouflage at best. Still, he had to make some effort.

They met Mystique at the coffee shop he'd been doing his stake out in the day before, although this time they went inside. Today, for some reason, she looked like a mousy, slightly overweight woman in an oversized sweater and ill fitting jeans. She didn't want to attract attention to herself, perhaps. She looked up from her coffee as they sat down at her table, and she remarked, "Brought the chippie today?"

"Cram it up your ass, Blue Meanie," Faith replied, almost nonchalantly. "Now that the mob is after you, you need all the help you can get."

She raised an imperious eyebrow at her. "And how will you help, dearie? Flash your tits at them?"

"Nah, I'm leaving that job to you."

He cleared his throat, hoping they didn't get into a fight in the coffee shop. He supposed he should be flattered about women getting in a fight over him, but it wasn't about him at all - it was two alpha females, trying to establish who was queen bee. "Is Vogel on the move?"

That's why Mystique was here. They both figured, after Logan Yashida's rather grisly hello, that the mob would be scrambling to get Vogel to a new location, so she'd been watching the hotel. It was decided that this was where Mystique would infiltrate his security detail, and Logan would provide the chaos that would allow her to slip in unnoticed. She'd then call him as soon as she could and let him know the new location of Vogel's hideout, as well as (hopefully) the location of the auction. The only problem was his causing havoc. It had to be precisely timed, so the chances of civilian danger were at a minimum, but that was the hardest part of this all and the hardest thing to plan around. "The mobsters are thick on the ground and as agitated as Evangelicals stuck in the middle of a mutant pride parade. They're getting ready to move and soon. We need to get started."

He nodded, not surprised, but he also wasn't surprised at the look Faith was giving him out of the corner of his eye. "What exactly are you doing?"

He had neglected to mention that over breakfast this morning, for a good reason: he had no idea what he was doing. "I'm playin' it by ear. It depends on who's there and who I have to deal with."

"You mean that big mutant guy."

"Yeah. Amongst others."

She nodded, and while she seemed to accept that, Faith was giving him a look that said, _"We're talking about this later." _He was sure they would.

Mystique looked at them both and smiled in that cold, unsettling way of hers. "He's a loner for a reason, sweet cheeks. All his little girlfriends seem to die horribly."

He shot her an evil look, but Faith just shrugged and reached into her pocket, pulling out a stick of gum and popping it into her mouth. "Yeah, well, I kill most of my boyfriends, so we're even."

That wasn't true, but he appreciated the solidarity. (It wasn't true, was it?)

They moved out to the street, and simply waited. Mystique had taken the time to duck behind a Dumpster and reemerge as the raggedy bag lady from yesterday, and crossed the street to be closer to the Pacific Grand. Again, she was ignored by everyone. He started walking slowly up the opposite side of the street, biding his time. Faith remained at one of the outdoor tables of the coffee shop, waiting, but trying to look casual about it.

It wasn't too long before the mobsters showed up again, milling about in a way that seemed to suggest controlled chaos. Logan leaned against a wall like a hustler and stared at them, wondering when they were going to notice. He took off his sunglasses and tucked them in the pocket of his jeans to see if it helped at all.

It must have, because about a minute later one of the thick necked guys stared back at him with cold, steel grey eyes, and he saw the moment the penny dropped - the moment he realized it was Logan Yashida brazenly casing them. He grinned evilly and waved as the guy shouted a warning and pulled his gun, about a dozen other similar looking guys responding and doing the same thing.

Logan tore off and ran down a side alley, the only one on this street. It dead ended at a chain link fence, but those were easy to climb. He was going to lead them as far from the populated streets as possible, which would not only lessen collateral damage, but thin the forces out in front of the hotel and increase the chaos. Mystique would have no problem slipping in unnoticed.

He cut down a narrow side street - an alley by default - and had yet to see a sign of pursuit, which bothered him. He paused and listened, sure they were following, and turned to go, in time to see a rather big shadow fall across the mouth of the alley.

It was the big strong guy he saw the other day, the guy who killed that man with a car. He cracked his knuckles - shit, the guy had huge hands - and said, "I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to meet you, Wolverine. Are your joints as strong as your bones? 'Cause I'm wondering how long it'll take me to rip your arm off and beat you to death with it."

In the overall scheme of things, this probably wasn't good.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Logan eyed the big guy, wondering where he should hit first - eyes, neck, knees, or the good old stand by, groin - when he heard racing footsteps somewhere in the distance. Not coming towards him, like the mob guys, but coming towards the Hulk, coming up behind him. A friend of the behemoth? Somehow he didn't think so, so he decided to play the hunch. He was pretty sure the big guy hadn't heard it yet. "Why are you with these idiots?" Logan asked, trying to distract him. "Don't you know who you're working for?"

The big guy cracked his knuckles. "Says the moron who does stuff for free. Maybe you wouldn't be best known for being a homeless drifter if you weren't an idiot."

Logan tensed his arms, balling his fists at his sides. "Weird. I thought I was better known for killing assholes like you." He decided to see if he could make this guy take the first move, and he did so by backing up a step. Just like he thought, it spurred the guy's "fight or flight" response, and he lumbered forward, as graceful as an ox in high heels. (Which made for a great mental picture.) The ox was so focused on him he really didn't notice Faith coming up behind him until it was too late.

He'd started to turn, but Faith had already launched into her drop kick, and she landed squarely on his back, heels digging in between his shoulder blades. He started toppling like a redwood, and Logan stepped aside, but instinctively popped his claws and jammed them upwards, skewering one of his kidneys (assuming he had all the standard issue organs in the standard issue places). He let out a grunt of pain and tried to grab him, but Logan slipped free just before he hit the asphalt with a bone jarring thud.

Faith came over and kicked him in the face hard, so hard that Logan heard a cheekbone snap, and if he wasn't unconscious now, he was certainly heavily dazed. She quickly pulled up the ox's coat and found his shoulder holster, pulling out his gun. "You ain't man enough to have this," she told him.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from him and down the alley. "Go West; I'm goin' East."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "That's how you thank me?"

He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "You're the best girlfriend ever. But you need to get goin' now, 'cause if they see us together we'll lose the element of surprise." As if to underscore that, the ox groaned and shifted in the alley - he wasn't completely down yet. Damn it. How tough was that fucker?

She tucked the gun into her waistband, and said, "You're lucky that makes sense. See you on the flip side." She took off up the side street, and he lingered long enough to confirm that the syrup slow mobsters knew which way he was going before taking off down the street.

He heard the squeal of a car cornering way too fast, and knew they'd sent out drivers as well. Terrific. He loitered in a dark doorway until he saw the speeding black vehicle, and made a quick visual scan, confirming there was almost no one out at the moment. But then again, this was where the town started to be known as the "bad side" - the only people here were doing illegal deals of one sort or another. They knew how to disappear fast.

Logan had to time this just right, but he figured even if he fucked up, he'd still get what he wanted. He ran and jumped up on the hood of a parked Subaru, and then launched himself at the speeding Escalade.

He jumped before it reached him, calculating inertia and momentum, and figuring even if he jumped too soon and they hit him, the sheer amount of adamantium in him would lead to major damage, but he was roughly correct in his calculations. He hit the hood and crashed right through the bulletproof windshield.

Glass flew like a hurricane of razor blades as he plopped straight into the laps of the driver and the passenger, both beyond stunned at the arrival of a sudden guest, and as the driver fought to control the steering wheel, Logan kneed him in the face, catching him straight under the chin. The passenger drew his gun, but Logan gave him a sharp elbow that shattered his nose, splattering him with blood, knocking the man out for now.

The Escalade crashed violently into a parked SUV on the side of the street, throwing him hard against the dashboard, which cracked and crumpled beneath his adamantium spine. The SUV's car alarm started screeching like a banshee, which was funny since the thing was fucking totaled. It was like crying wolf after the paddock had been emptied.

There was a guy in the back seat, but he hadn't had a clear shot until now. He aimed and fired, going for the throat, but Logan shifted and took it in the side of his face - a solid blow like an anvil to the face, followed by the singe and burn of torn open skin and hot gunpowder - and at the same time slashed out. Logan felt the contact and heard the scream, warm blood splashing on him, and when his gunpowder burnt eyes healed, he saw he'd cut off the man's gun hand. Fair enough. It was rude to point anyways.

He kicked open the passenger door, and a woman exclaimed, "Oh my god! Are you -" She stopped dead as she saw the claws coming out of his hands, and dropped the cell phone, which shattered on the sidewalk. She backed up several steps, her eyes as wide as silver dollars. The vinegary scent of fear overwhelmed the scent of her perfume. "You're - uh - um … one of them."

That annoyed the shit out of him - one of them? Like he was something out of a freak show - but he didn't have time to deal with that. He heard loud Russian conversation across the street, trying to figure out if open pursuit was best (the cops would surely be on the way) or if they should just retreat and set a trap for him later, so he took off running, retracting his claws into his hands.

The next block over, he paused to catch his breath and listen. There were police sirens approaching, and he figured the chase was over for now. Although there were probably cops on their payroll, there was no way for their boys (or girls - although it was more likely to be boys) to control the environment without giving themselves away. He wondered how the driver and witnesses would explain someone diving in front of their super armored Escalade, and figured it would be hilarious, but he didn't stick around to hear it. He wiped the blood off his face before walking out of the shadows, trying his best to stick to back ways and alleys where no one would notice him or at least wouldn't give a shit.

He made his way back to the coffee shop, and he'd just hit the block when Faith appeared, revving a hot red Corvette that was undoubtedly expensive (one of Tony's? Or had she bought her own?) and hardly inconspicuous. Still, he was glad to see it, especially when she popped open the passenger side door. "Run into Big Stupid again?"

He assumed that was her name for the Ox. "Nah. I took out one of the Escalades instead."

"Cool." As soon as he was inside the car, she peeled away from the curb, then reached across and opened the glove compartment. He could see that she had a towel and wet naps in it. "When you're a Slayer for a while, you learn you always gotta be prepared for bein' slimed."

"I bet." He wiped the rest of the blood off his face and arms with the towel, which was so old it seemed as soft and thin as a chamois.

"I gotta change of clothes in the trunk, but I bet they won't fit you."

"I don't look good in belly shirts."

She laughed, elbowing him lightly. "Are you kiddin' me? With your abs? Yeah you do."

Now there was a mental picture he didn't need.

* * *

There was nothing to do but go back to Faith's place and wait. He took a shower and cleaned up, changed clothes, and they split a pizza while waiting for Mystique to call.

The incident - the Escalade crash - made the evening news, but only as part of a "suspected gang war involving the Russian mafia". The plastic pretty newscasters didn't mention a person hitting the car, and they had no witnesses saying anything of the sort, but he really didn't expect them to. This was all entering a weird territory, especially for Canada, which really wasn't accustomed to this sort of thing. They weren't like New York or California or Florida, where a mob related killing was often met with a half-hearted shrug. People at very high levels were probably freaking out.

Not to mention the Russian mob. What was their next move? He'd proven they didn't have anything he couldn't get to - would they really try and trap him? How? Well, on the surface that was an easy answer: present him a target so juicy he'd have to hit it, even if he believed it was a trap. But what then? Getting him to enter a trap was easy - keeping him there was the hard part. Surely they knew about not only Bloody Friday, but that whole Triad/Yakuza thing in Hong Kong. They knew he wasn't easy prey. So what did they have that they thought could stop him? More mutants of the ox variety?

That was actually a slightly bothersome thought. He didn't have any delusions about that - Ox was not down and out. Along with super strength he must have been tougher than your average bear, because after getting a kidney bisected and taking a full strength kick in the face from Faith, he had still been moving. He would be back, and he would be pissed off. The only question was, how many friends did he have?

They were watching a Simpsons episode, him sitting in the corner of her sofa while she stretched out on it, her head resting on his leg, when she looked up at him and asked, "What if she doesn't call?"

As the hours had ticked by, that question had occurred to him too. "If she wanted to take them on alone, she would have. I think she wants to make them suffer before she kills them."

"That's the betrayal angle. What about the caught and killed angle?"

He shook his head, automatically dismissing it. "She's too good. She won't get caught."

Faith studied him skeptically, long enough that he glared back down at her "What?"

"For mortal enemies, you sound like you almost admire her."

He snorted derisively. "No. But I respect her. She's the best at what she does."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"Cause havoc and destruction. Nobody can take something down from the inside like Mystique can. She lives to destroy."

Faith chewed on that for a moment. "As thoughts go, that's not very comforting."

"Normally no. But in this case it works."

Or so he hoped. Again, they had no knowledge of any other mutants within the mob, and no idea what their powers were. It was possible there was someone who could see through Mystique, counteract her powers. If so, she really was screwed.

About an hour later, the phone finally rang.

"So you threw yourself at a car," she said, chuckling faintly. "Not subtle, huh?"

"I'm not supposed to be subtle. I'm supposed to make them piss their pants," he pointed out. Since her voice was female, non-Russian, he assumed she was in a different form, one that wouldn't be noticed by other mobsters. "Land line?"

"Pay phone," she confirmed. Which was good, as cell phone calls could be intercepted quite easily. Land lines were a hell of a lot more secure. "You should see these poor assholes. They're in a complete tizzy. They don't know why you're after them, and they're trying to figure out who you want."

"They'd give him to me?"

"To make you go away? Hell yes. They'd give you a million dollars if it would make you walk. Not only are you killing their people, you're doing two things they hate. You're shining a media spotlight on them, and you're making them look weak to other gangs."

This was Vancouver, so there wasn't a lot of choices. "Triad?"

"Looks like they're positioning themselves to move in on their territory. But they're waiting for you to back off. They don't want on your bad side again." She paused briefly. "You've done some fucking up of the gangs around here before, haven't you?"

He grimaced at the memory, and rubbed his eyes, which suddenly seemed dry and sandy. "Let's just say we've never gotten along. I don't like people who take advantage of other people, especially as a business model."

She chuckled again, but in a low, dry way that seemed inherently evil. It gave him a shiver. "How can you be a beast and a goody two shoes at the same time? I don't get how that works."

"I am not a beast," he growled, turning his back on Faith so she didn't see the expression on his face - or he hers. Not that it mattered; they could both guess.

Again, Mystique continued to chuckle. "Yeah, right. I saw you yesterday -"

"What the fuck have you learned?" he interrupted testily. Okay, this was a bad move, he was letting her know she'd gotten under his skin, but he couldn't help it right now. He hated being referred to as some kind of animal ... although, with a nickname like Wolverine, he would be called an animal for all the days of his life.

She sighed, as if he was a tremendous burden to her. "They keep referring to "the warehouse", which is where the auction's going to take place. It's on one of the piers, but I haven't narrowed it down yet. It's going on tomorrow night, although there's some fear that your appearance is going to fuck things up. Some people have gotten nervous; some who know your reputation have already pulled out and left."

"Smart people."

"The head guy here, Radinovitch, keeps insisting they can handle you, that you're not the only mutant in the area."

"The big guy?"

"Yeah, his name is Roshenko. They have been talking like there's more, though. The name Kolinkov has come up."

"Who's he?"

"No idea. I assume he's a mutant too, but I can't tell you what he looks like or what his powers are ... yet. The guy I doubled is just muscle; he's a low level lackey. I'm going to try and aim higher."

He knew that she had killed one of the mobsters in front of the Pacific Grand and taken his place - that was the only way this was going to work. Once his body was identified, though, they'd be in major trouble. Still, he figured she'd do what she was planning to do: take someone else's place. "Be careful. If they find the body -"

She made a derisive noise. "Oh please. Who's the shapeshifter here? By the time they find this idiot, we'll be long gone."

Yes, well, that was stupid. He should never have doubted Mystique's ability to kill and get away with it. "Tell me, do the Russians still meet at that bar downtown?"

"What, the one you razed several years ago? Yeah, but they're tripled the security there - they figure you're gonna hit it. They think you don't know about the restaurant, though."

"The restaurant?"

She gave him the address, and then said, "Gotta go. I'll check in once I have something useful. Happy hunting."

"Same to you." He hung up, wondering why caffeine never seemed to work for him. Oh, if he shotgunned a pot of coffee or a six pack of Red Bull he'd get a brief buzz, but it only lasted a minute or two before it faded away, his system adapting to it and rendering it neutral. He felt like he could use the jolt right now.

"That sounded like I'm gonna hafta kick her ass," Faith said.

He smirked, turning to face her. "Don't ever let me stop ya."

She crossed her arms over her chest, her wide brown eyes surprisingly compassionate. "So what's going on?"

He sighed, the weariness settling on his shoulder like a lead cloak. "I'm gonna wait a couple hours, then I'm heading out again."

"Oh yeah? Why?"

"'Cause I'm gonna test their loyalty to their man. I'm gonna split them down the middle."

She narrowed her eyes skeptically. "Do you mean that figuratively or literally?"

He shrugged. "That's gonna be up to them."

At least adrenaline was a buzz that lasted a long time.

* * *

The restaurant looked like any other, a small rectangular building made of brick, the windows narrow and covered with dark curtains, but it didn't look sinister more than homely and almost quaint. You'd never know to look at it that it was a front for the Russian mafia, except that they had borsch as a menu item.

There weren't many people inside, which was a good thing. As soon as he entered, the small brass bell on the door jingling, he flipped the "Open" sign to "Closed", and barked, "Leave, now!"

There were looks of confusion from the waitress, the hostess, and some of the diners. But a man at a far table looked at him with wide eyes, and Logan knew he recognized him. _Because he was Russian mafia. _

Logan dove for him as he reached under his coat, and people started screaming and scrambling for the door before his gun had cleared his jacket. Logan grabbed him by the wrist and twisted sharply, breaking his arm and making him scream as his gun tumbled from his useless hand. Someone burst out the kitchen door and shot him in the head - it felt like a cannonball grazed him, dropping him to one knee, stars briefly exploding before his eyes. He shook it away, feeling a warm trickle of blood down his scalp, and glared over his shoulder at the thick necked moron with the gun. "You guys haven't learned a fucking thing, have you?" he growled. "Bullets don't hurt me." As he snarled at the man, his hand slid towards the first mobster's fallen gun. "But I bet they hurt you." He raised the gun and fired, and the man fell back through the kitchen doors. Logan hadn't aimed, so he doubt he'd hit him, but he sure as shit scared him. After all, Wolverine wasn't supposed to use guns.

The broken handed mobster was going for another weapon with his good hand, so Logan sprung his claws and plunged them through his shoulder and drove him down to the floor, kneeling on his gut and pressing the hot barrel of the gun into his forehead. His screaming went up a register as the smell of singed flesh filled his nostrils. "Shut the fuck up, asshole. The only reason you're still alive is I need you to get a message to Radinovitch."

At the use of his boss's name, he fell silent, staring up at him with wide, wild eyes, pupils shrunk to pinpricks, heaving for breath like he'd just run a marathon, sweat and hair gel melting down his broad face. He was about one small shock away from a heart attack.

"You listening? Good. You tell him I'll go away as soon as he gives me Vogel. And if he doesn't give me Vogel, I'm not gonna stop until I chop your boss's ugly fucking head off. Got it?"

He nodded as best he could, and Logan tossed his gun across the room and pulled his claws out of his shoulder, making him scream again. Logan didn't bother doing anything else to him, as he had no fight left in him.

Stalking to the door, it exploded open before he could reach it, and a dark suited thug in a long coat slashed at him with a machete. Logan brought up his arm to stop it, the blade biting straight through muscle and flesh before hitting adamantium bone and shattering like it was made of glass. As the fragments of blade flew across the room, Logan slashed him across the face, cutting off most of his nose.

The man screamed bloody murder, bringing his hands up to his nose stump as blood gushed freely from his face, and Logan kicked him in the gut, sending him sprawling on the pavement outside. "Did you really think that was going to work?" Logan taunted him, before kicking him in the face and putting an end to his screaming.

Now the ball was in the mob's court. And, if he was right, things were about to get very, _very _ugly.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Logan knew it was wrong for him to sleep at Faith's place, quiet and safe, while all hell was probably breaking loose on the streets, but it didn't stop him. He slept well, and it was good to be back with Faith again. When she left again, he would miss her. He wondered if she would miss him as much - Faith was just such a survivor that he had a hard time imagining anything getting to her that much. He liked to think he was a survivor, but Mystique had been right about one thing: he did have emotional weaknesses. He really didn't know what to do about it, or why he hadn't hardened as much as he should have. It was the one area where he just didn't heal as fast as he usually did.

He was in the shower, letting the hard spray pound his scalp in a way that was half way between painful and enjoyable, when Faith peeked in the shower stall and said, "Marc's on the phone. Wanna talk to him, or should I just trade innuendoes with him?"

He turned off the taps and reached around her for a towel. "Nah, I'll trade innuendoes with him."

"Cool."

She handed him the handset as soon as he was out of the shower. "Got something for me?" he asked, wedging the receiver against his shoulder as he continued to dry himself off.

"And hola to you too, mi amigo," he said brightly. "Actually it's one of those good news/bad news things."

"Gimme the bad news first."

"Hey - my news. I'll give it in the order I want, and you'll like it."

Logan scowled at his reflection in the mirror, sorry Marc couldn't see it. "Why can't you be afraid of me like everyone else?"

"'Cause I'm scarier than you. Okay, so, there was a triple murderer named Alexei Ivanov who did time in a Moscow prison during the '80's. The thing is, there's some weirdness."

"Such as?" He scrubbed his hair with the towel, covering his face. He felt like he was in a cone of silence.

"Well, he was supposedly transferred to a prison that never, as far as I can tell, existed. Also, he has a death certificate that simply marks him as deceased. There's no autopsy, no report, no cause of death listed, or any sign that he was ever buried anywhere."

Logan grunted knowingly. "Sounds like Org whitewashing."

"Yeah, or just the Soviet system at its most efficient."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he could have just been a guy they wanted to go away. The Russians did have a way of making people they didn't like so much disappear. They'd never show up in any form again, dead or alive, but eventually a death certificate would show up in official records. And it would be just as unhelpful as the one I found for Ivanov. You see, it is possible for a government to make people disappear and have no one notice. Pinochet got greedy. You do it in little batches, pick the right targets, and no one notices. Grab a few hundred people at once, and you're just asking for a beat down."

"It bothers me that you've thought about this."

"C'mon, you've always gotta plan for when a small country's leadership falls in your lap. Dictators aren't created spontaneously; it takes a lot of planning."

Logan shook his head, throwing his towel back on the rack. "You are scarier than me."

"Told ya. And continuing in the bad news vein, there's no photo of this guy."

He sighed, not really surprised. "So, could be me, could not be me."

"Right. All we got is the word of the blue bitch, and we can hardly trust her, can we?"

"Guess not." It was hard to get dressed and talk on the phone, but he tried. If anyone had been watching, they'd have laughed their ass off.

Marc clicked his tongue in a scolding manner. "You believe her."

"It's not that … exactly. I get the weirdest sense of déjà vu around her. I think I did know her before."

"But you can't remember when or how."

"No."

"Doesn't do you a fucking bit of good, does it?"

Logan sighed. "Have you been talking to Faith behind my back?"

"Bud, we're just worried. She has tried to kill you, you know."

"Yeah, but if I discriminated against everyone who tried to kill me … fuck, that's about half the world, isn't it?"

"Well, you ain't gonna win anyone's Miss Congeniality award. But it's a bullshit title anyways, and that sash don't go with anything."

"You are not makin' me laugh, not now."

Marc made a disgusted noise. "It's always you, you, you, isn't it?"

"Don't you have Matt to torment?"

"He doesn't think it's torment. He thinks I'm cute."

He got his jeans on and considered himself lucky. There was no way he could talk on the phone and put a shirt on at the same time, so that would wait. "Love really is blind, huh?"

"You should know all about that, sparky." He could hear the grin in his voice.

"Look, it's not like I'm thinkin' Mystique has my best interests at heart. I know she doesn't. I know she a psycho bitch who'd kill me as soon as look at me. I got that."

"Then why are you doin' this? Yeah, I know, Vogel's a bad guy, and not too many people are gonna shed tears over the Russia mafia. But she's got you doing the bulk of the grunt work. What's your guarantee that's she's not gonna totally fuck you when she gets what she wants?"

He had actually asked himself that question dozens of times, and had no answer. In all honesty, Logan assumed she'd try and screw him over in some manner, although he felt prepared to deal with her when it came to that. But as he searched for something to tell Marc, he suddenly blurted, "She owes me."

"For what?"

Logan gave himself a funny look in the mirror, one he was sure Marc would have given him had he been here. "I dunno. That just sorta … came out. It feels right, though."

"But for what, dude? This a memory?"

"Maybe … but it has no form. It's just a … gut feeling."

Marc grunted in understanding. It was so massively kind of him to never outright dismiss a gut feeling. He knew that was almost all he had. "It ain't for not killin' her when you could have at the Statue of Liberty, is it?"

Scott had never believed he wasn't trying to kill her. But Logan knew that a trunk shot would hurt her pretty bad, but probably not kill her. He didn't know how he knew that, admittedly, but he supposed if he had known her before, it all made sense now. "No. But I'm not sure what it refers to."

"Ask her. Of course, she'll probably bullshit you, but maybe she can give you a nugget of something to work with."

"Yeah, I will. You know, I think I need to go straight to the source about this. He's only Human - if he lies to me, I'll probably know."

"You're talkin' about Vogel."

"Yep."

Marc made an impatient noise, and he heard him briefly moving around, a soft sound that was hard to describe or recognize. "Shit, why couldn't this be goin' on next week? We're tied up here 'til the end of the week."

"Where are you guys now?"

"Spain. Ibiza, to be exact."

"Holy shit, the party capital of the world. What the fuck are you doin' sober and talkin' to me?"

That made Marc chuckle. "I ain't here for pleasure. We're tailing another merc who specializes in industrial espionage. She's trying to double cross an employer, and we're here to ruin her deal. Namely, we're stealing the stuff back."

"That sounds like it would take three minutes for you to do."

"Normally, but she's a mutie too. There's some possible complications."

"Ah. What's her power?"

"She's a speedster. That's why we gotta time this just right. She can travel a mile in … holy fuck, what did we time her at? A minute? Maybe a few seconds less than that."

"Fuck." That was pretty fast. "No one's noticed her?"

"She travels too fast. She's a weird blur in the corner of your eye. By the time you look, she's gone."

"Even to you?"

Again, Marc chuckled. It was so much warmer and friendlier than Mystique's version, but that only made sense, as he was a warmer, friendlier person than she was. He trusted Marc with his life, and actually had, several times; Mystique he wouldn't trust as far as he could throw Juggernaut. Pre Jean dissolving him, of course. "Are you forgetting who you're talking to? She's a big old screaming hot blur to me. I'm the only one who has any warning she's coming, since she makes such a thermal mess. It's just not enough of a warning to be much help."

"You got any idea how you'll handle her?"

"Some. But hey, aren't we supposed to be talking about you?"

"No." Marc clicked his tongue again, and Logan said, "I'm okay, all right? I don't trust her; I know she's gonna fuck me over or at least try. I can take care of myself."

"It ain't a question if you can or can't, bud. It's a question if you will. Don't get too caught up in this."

"Don't worry, _mom_, I won't."

"I wish I was your mom. I'd beat the shit outta you."

Logan actually had very little doubt about that.

* * *

Logan had finally finished getting dressed and was about to head out to see what trouble he could find when the phone rang again. This time it was Mystique, and she didn't have much to say. "Meet me at the Barnes and Noble across from the park in half an hour," and then hung up before he could ask which park. But he thought he knew what she was referring to.

He arrived early, and prowled the stacks for a bit before becoming disappointed. Yes, it was a large, well lit store, with skylights letting in the sunlight, and the aisles neatly stacked and divided into sections, the air redolent of the coffee they were serving in their adjunct café, and it just depressed the hell out of him. He missed the smell of must, of slowly decaying pages that made him sneeze, and the store cats that either hid from him in utter terror, ignored him, or followed him around in a relentless bid for attention. He was happy to lose hours going through messy piles of books in search of one really good one.

God, he was so fucking old.

Before someone called him Grampa, he started sifting through the crime thriller titles, trying to find something that looked like it might be diverting for a full five minutes, when a woman said, "Well, I guess it's a step up from Russian poetry."

He already knew it was Mystique before he glanced over his shoulder. Today she was disguised as a semi-punky college student type, a short Japanese girl with short, razor cut hair and wire rim glasses, wearing combat boots with blue colored tights and a skirt that looked like a piece of vinyl, topped with a Rise Against t-shirt and a camouflage jacket at least one and a half sizes too large for her. She'd also added a piercing to her lip and nose. "What, you'd think I'd be in the poetry section?"

She smirked. "From what I recall, you liked it. Which was so fucking gay of you."

He turned to her, crossing his arms over his chest. Was the Russian poetry thing a joke? He didn't get it. "What the fuck are you on about?"

She waved her hand dismissively in front of her face, like she was swatting a fly. "Fine, you don't remember that. Whatever. Why'd you bring the chippie?"

Faith was in the café, having a latte and reading a comic book. "She's along in case we decide to go cause some trouble. Also, in case Roshenko shows up."

That made her giggle in a truly unsettling way. "Her? Take on Roshenko? What, are you gonna shove her down his throat?"

"She rattled his cage yesterday. Hopefully he doesn't know that. I told you, she's stronger than she looks."

"She better be, or she's gonna be a bimbo blintz in one swat."

"Her name is Faith. Stop name calling like a high school bitch."

Mystique's eyes widened briefly, and he saw the tiniest flash of yellow. "You watch what you call me."

He simply raised an eyebrow at that, refusing to take the threat that seriously. "What d'ya have to report?"

She held his gaze for a long moment, challenging, but after a moment decided that the Barnes and Noble wasn't an ideal place to settle a score. "Your request last night is sending shockwaves through the group. They have no idea what to do."

"They're not givin' him to me?"

"They were hoping you wanted someone else. Vogel must have cut some kind of deal with Radinovitch. If he gives up Vogel, there will be hell to pay." She lowered her voice and leaned in closer. "He's the head of their new drug unit."

Logan looked at her curiously. "Vogel?"

She nodded, looking at him over her glasses. "He's giving them something only they have, something they can't get anywhere else." She paused dramatically, and he waited with growing impatience. "It's called Hype."

"Hype," he repeated blandly. Was she making this up?

"It's a synthetic mutant steroid."

That made him check to make sure she wasn't lying, as far as he could tell. He still had no idea, but she looked pretty damn serious. "What does it do?"

"What do you think it does? It gives the user enhanced strength … as long as the drug lasts. Long term users supposedly develop greater musculature, but they're not telling anyone that long term usage will actually kill you, as it degrades something in the brain of the normals. I don't know what, some chemical, I wasn't able to get a good look at the notes."

"What does it do to mutants?"

She shrugged. "They don't give it to them. Radinovitch is actually hoping to sell it covertly to the military, so they can be ready to fight the muties."

"They selling that at the auction too?"

"No, this is more back room stuff. But it's why they don't want to lose Vogel, as he's the only guy synthesizing it."

"How's he doing that?"

She shrugged again, shook her head. "No clue. If the mob knew, they'd bring in their own chemist and send Vogel to you, gift wrapped."

Logan stared at a bookshelf as he thought, and his eyes scudded over a book titled Déjà Vu. For some reason, that struck him as almost funny. "Is Roshenko on the stuff?"

"No. As far as I know, he's a real mutant."

"What about the other guys?"

She shrugged again, watching as a man with a bad haircut walked by, giving her the eye. Wouldn't he have been disappointed to discover she wasn't a barely legal Asian girl, but a very adult and very blue mass murderer? Talk about a buzz kill. Once he was gone, she said, "Maybe. But I haven't been offered any yet. Just keep it in mind." She glanced around, mainly making sure that guy wasn't hovering, and then told him in a quiet voice, "Radinovitch is shutting the auction down. It's Vogel's idea all the way, and he is arguing with him over it, but Radinovitch thinks since you're after Vogel, it'll be an ideal target for you. He wants to stop it before it starts."

Logan grunted in disappointment. "Smart."

"Brilliant for a fucking normal. But still not smart enough." She reached out and grabbed his hand, which he thought was odd, until he felt her pressing a piece of paper in his palm. He took it and instantly slipped it in the front pocket of his jeans. "They're clearing out the warehouse. Go get the stuff."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "What about Vogel? What about the Hype?"

She gave him a small, sharp smile that had no warmth at all, and patted his arm. "One thing at a time, old man." She then started to walk away.

He didn't like the feeling he was being dismissed, or possibly screwed over. So he grabbed her arm, stopping her (and she looked at his hand on her arm like it was a fly she had to squish), and said, "Don't forget, sweetheart, you owe me."

When she looked up, he saw - just for a moment - a look of genuine shock flash through her eyes. She quickly covered it up, but it was too late. He'd seen it, and she could deny it all she wanted, but it wouldn't matter. He _was_ right. "What the fuck are you talking about? I don't owe you shit."

"Yeah, you do. And you know you do."

"You're bluffing."

"A hell of a lot better than you."

She ripped her arm out of his grasp and walked out of the bookstore in a small huff that was almost convincing. Faith, who was now browsing over at the stacks of translated magna, glanced over at him and seemed to beckon him with a look. As soon as he was beside her, she asked, "Can I kick her ass before we're all done here?"

He shrugged, reaching into his pocket for the slip of paper. "Knock yourself out." He looked at the piece of paper, and Faith joined him. It was an address hastily scrawled on the back of a torn strip of envelope.

"What's this?" she wondered.

"The address for the warehouse. The mutant poison should be here."

"Great, let's bounce."

He gave her a skeptical look, and she shook her head. "Uh uh, I'm goin'. What if King Kong's there? It's what I'm here for."

He supposed, but he honestly hoped there was no one there beyond the usual suspects. He really didn't want to lose it in front of her. He'd just have to try really hard not to.

* * *

The "warehouse" was actually an old cannery that had been converted into storage space. It still had the low slung, long look and weathered siding of a building built completely for function, with no thought to form or ergonomics or even just a minor acquiescence to not looking like a place it would be excellent to commit suicide in. It was just a sad squatty toad of a building, one that you were kind of hoping would leap off and sink into the water. No good could ever come from it. It probably smelled of rotting fish and dashed expectations.

If he didn't have Mystique's instructions, he would have known this was the place, if only because the other armored Escalade was there. They saw three guys, but Logan was sure there were more, just keeping out of sight. As if to prove the point, they found another thug skulking around the pier. Logan grabbed him from behind and snapped his neck, so he could steal his long coat and sunglasses, but there was nothing that could be done about his hair.

Faith hung back, keeping an eye out for back up, while Logan walked towards the former cannery, pretending like he was supposed to be here. If you had the attitude that you belonged and you knew where you were going, most of the time people never questioned you. So far that seemed to be working here, as a thug passed him by, carrying a box towards the Escalade, never giving him a second glance. He felt like he'd passed a test.

But far too soon. He was just crossing to the cannery entrance when he caught a familiar scent underneath the miasma of old fish and rusted metal, and a hand reached out and grabbed him. Before he could react, he was slammed face first against the wall, an arm pinning the back of his neck and preventing him from moving in any meaningful way. "Who's the leak?" Roshenko grated in his ear, trying to rub his face into the brick. "Who's helping you?"

This was bad. It felt like he was tearing his neck muscles since he couldn't crush his spine, and he was standing far enough away from him - although still leaning into him - that he couldn't actually stab anything. But he wasn't completely helpless. Logan waited until he put more pressure on his neck, then snapped his head back hard, catching his skull on his chin. It wasn't a very hard blow, and Logan was already seeing stars from having his windpipe and carotid artery crushed, but Logan did it a couple of times in rapid succession and Roshenko stumbled back, letting go of him.

Although Logan would have appreciated a moment to catch his breath, he knew he probably didn't have it. Even as his eyesight continued to pixilate, he popped his claws and jammed them in Roshenko's barrel chest, right where his heart was. No, not a big fight or a fair one, but he just didn't have time for this bullshit.

Roshenko collapsed to the ground so hard Logan thought he felt it shake, and Logan rested against the wall, breathing hard, gulping in air and waiting for his vision to return completely. What would it be like to give a fucking monster like that mutant steroids? He'd probably be strong enough to bite through the CN Tower.

Logan heard a strange noise, and then Roshenko's hand darted out, grabbed his ankle, and whipped him head first into the wall across the alleyway.

Logan blacked out on impact, although he came to maybe a second later, feeling Roshenko grab the back of his neck in one meaty paw. The strange noise, like a creaking door, turned out to be Roshenko laughing. "You think you're smarter than me, eh? You think that's the end of me?" Roshenko slammed his face into the asphalt. He felt his nose shatter, blood pouring in a hot gush down his face and down his throat. "I have redundant systems - two hearts, two nervous systems, two livers." Roshenko slammed his head down again, smearing his face on the ground, tearing skin and sending fragments of cartilage deeper into his head. "How many brains do you have? If I knock yours out of your ears, do you have another?" He slammed his head down again and again. Logan saw fireworks bloom behind his eyes, the blood running down his throat choking him.

Boy, he could have used some mutant steroids right now.


	9. Chapter 9

9

Logan imagined that he now knew what a cigarette butt felt like now.

Was Roshenko attempting to scrape his entire face off, all the way down to the skull? It felt like it. The asphalt was now wet and slick with his blood and skin, and while his face now felt like it was on fire from his healing factor, the pain had reached a zero point, the point where he didn't quite feel it anymore. The smallest nudge and he would, but for the moment he was blissfully unable to feel as his eyelid ripped and his cornea scraped bare concrete. It was amazing how detached he could become from his own body. Probably not healthy. Jean had probably been right about that.

He had been searching his mind for some way out of this - he wasn't having much luck; it was like yelling in an empty warehouse - when there was a fleshy thud, and Roshenko finally let go. "Paws off the boyfriend, Bluto."

Oh good - Faith must have wondered where he went.

He turned over and laid there, listening to the fight as he tried to will his healing factor to speed the fuck up. His face was burning still, and his eyesight was somewhat lopsided, as spots were clearing out of his left eye, but he still had a significant dark spot in his right eye. Good enough.

He pushed himself up, trying not to look at the bloody smear on the pavement that was probably the majority of his face, and sat heavily against the wall, waiting for more of his vision to come back and some strength to enter his legs. His head was reeling, his face burning and angry, and he wasn't sure if he could actually stand up without falling over. He watched as Roshenko stood up with a grunt. "You're the one from the other day, aren't you girly? Not too bad for a piece of ass."

"Ooh, name calling. I'm so scared," she replied, running at the alley wall. As she reached it, she actually seemed to run up it for a couple steps, using it as a launching point from which she sprung off and aimed a mid-air side kick at Roshenko's face as he straightened up. It was a solid hit, one that made something fly from his mouth and made him staggered back, but he didn't fall down. As he staggered towards him, Logan kicked out and caught his ankle, sweeping one of his tree trunk legs out from under him and sending him falling on his ass.

Logan would have spat he wanted his face back, but he wasn't sure he could talk, so he simply lunged from his seated position and stabbed his claws right through Roshenko's face. He made a noise that was partially a gag, partially a noise of pain, and Logan did it again, driving it all the way through. Before he could do it a third time, Roshenko hit him with a fist like a sledgehammer and drove him back. "Motherfucker!" the Russian roared, although it sounded like_"mudderfudder". _

As the Russian tried to get to his feet, Faith kicked him in the face, and while his head snapped back hard, causing blood to splatter, Roshenko grabbed her leg reflexively, and threw her into the wall. Logan was on him in a second, rage allowing him to move despite the pain, and he just began stabbing him. There was no aim in mind, no goal, he just wanted to inflict as much pain and damage as possible.

Roshenko turned his attention away from Faith and grabbed him by the throat, hammering his fist in his face, breaking his newly healed nose again, but Logan knew where his target was now whether he could see or not. He lashed out, and the pressure on his throat fell away, along with Roshenko's arm. "Son of a bitch!" he exclaimed, sounding more indignant than injured. Blood was pouring out of six holes in his face, one of which had cut his tongue down the middle (which was why he sounded funny, and why blood was pouring out of his mouth), and now blood was fountaining out the stump of his left arm, which ended just where his elbow had been. He still hauled back and punched Logan in the face with his right arm, throwing him back against the wall, making him taste new blood in his mouth. He had to spit out a tooth, which he hated since it always hurt so much when they grew back.

Faith must not have been hurt that much - thank god - as she grabbed Roshenko's arm and twisted it before bringing her elbow down hard on the bend, snapping his arm like an icicle. He screamed in pain and rage, and ran into the wall, slamming Faith between him and the brick, and Logan was on him once more, stabbing him in the side of the neck and head. He was spurting blood like a sieve now and roaring incoherently, unable to use his arms to continue the fight, and unable to use his legs since Logan was on his back, an arm around his throat, stabbing his other claws into him like this was a contest to see how much you could perforate a person before they fell down.

He was probably going to run Logan into the wall too, but as soon as Roshenko pulled away to do it, Faith kicked him in the groin, full power, and he made a retching noise and dropped heavily to his knees. Logan let him go, only to stand back and slash full on, decapitating him. "Do you have a second head?" Logan grumbled, as Roshenko's head rolled down the alley.

He then bent over, putting his hands on his knees, and spit more blood as Roshenko's headless corpse fell over and hit the ground with a wet plop. He was trying to will himself not to collapse. So far so good. But was the pavement really undulating?

"That's one way to end a fight," Faith noted.

When he'd caught enough breath to speak and was sure he wasn't going to pass out, he replied, "It's wonderfully final."

He closed his eyes, feeling the heat of his eyelid growing back, and heard a sound like potato chips crunching along with a feeling like fire ants crawling under his skin as his cartilage restructured itself and his nose healed up. Fuck, it hurt. It felt like his brow ridge was healing up too, the skin of his forehead bubbling like scalded milk.

Faith put a cool hand on his back, and he glanced at her. She had blood on her face and her t-shirt - most of it not hers - blood trickling from her nose, and what looked like the beginning of a shiner on the left side of her face, but otherwise she looked remarkably good. "Don't take this personal, sweet cheeks, but he fucked you up."

He nodded, not taking it personally. "I hate the super strong ones," he admitted, feeling like he had a monster fever. His head was burning, but his eyesight was almost back to normal.

They both heard footsteps and turned around to face the head of the alley, where a big thug suddenly rushed in, gun out. He stopped short when he saw them, covered in blood and still healing, and then noticed the headless corpse of Roshenko on the ground behind them. For a moment, all three of them stared at each other, and then the Russian thug dropped his gun. "Fuck this," he said in perfect English, then ran away.

"Should I go after him?" Faith wondered.

He shook his head. "Naw, he's smarter than the rest of 'em. Maybe he'll take this as a warning to find a new life."

"Wow, that's very optimistic of you."

"I think I still have a concussion."

But at least he knew that even his brain healed fast. Well, from some things. Physical injuries faded with time, but some of those mental scars were total motherfuckers.

* * *

Faith let him have a minute to recover some more, then they took out the rest of the thugs as they raided the warehouse. It didn't take long, and all and all was an embarrassing show for the mafia. Or maybe they were just that good. Or the mob was counting on Roshenko to take care of any and all threats, and none of them had counted on him having a kick ass girlfriend. He didn't much care - he was just glad he didn't get more of his face ripped off.

They found the toxin in a sealed crate, in a metal container that was too narrow to be a proper suitcase, and was full of dry ice. The toxin itself was in a sealed silver flask about the size and shape of your average thermos, only with a biohazard warning sticker on it. You really didn't want to accidentally drink it.

Once they recovered it they took off, headed for downtown. They were to take it to a lab that was under Tony's auspices, and they would destroy the stuff. Faith trusted this would happen, as Tony knew better than to make things worse, and also the lab techs knew better than to piss her off. He'd healed, but he was a huge bloody mess - it looked like he was wearing red face paint. So he trusted her to go in alone, deliver the stuff, and watch it get obliterated.

He felt like falling asleep, but he managed not to. Instead, he pulled out the GPS unit and tried to call up the signal.

Marc had told him to do it, of course - _"Track that bitch!" _- but Logan hadn't been sure how to do that. Except of course Marc knew how, and knew Tony had the know how as well. Faith just had to call in, and she got a tiny tracker that he was able to stick on her at the Barnes and Noble. Since she didn't wear clothes, since she was literally her clothes, he was sure she wouldn't wear it for long, either shedding it accidentally or deliberately. But he didn't care as long as it was close to wherever she had gone. He figured he'd be able to triangulate or at worst, guess where she and Vogel's mob were hiding out.

He got a hit finally. The tracker was stationary (no real surprise there), and in an area on the outskirts of the city, about fifteen miles northeast of their current location. He tried to remember what was out that way. Vacation homes? If he was right, that was still a fairly rural area, private … a good place to hide from a killer who expected to find you in a city. Also just a good place to hide a multitude of sins. There were many meth labs in places just like that - a Hype lab too? Why the fuck not?

Logan knew he couldn't trust her plans for Vogel. If she just wanted to kill him outright it'd be no big deal, but he felt that it wasn't that simple. She could have found a moment to do that while pretending to be a member of his crew. There was something else going on, and he didn't trust it.

Faith got back and assured him the stuff was "neutralized", in science geek speak - unless it could survive being nuked, but Faith said it didn't look like it. It changed color and started smelling like burnt hair spray. As signs went, those were odd but positive. Now all they needed to do was make sure all of Vogel's notes about the stuff were destroyed, cryptic or not.

He couldn't get over the sense that this was a gimme. Not by the mob, but by Mystique. This was a distraction or a diversion - like he was supposed to be - for the real target. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

They made a quick stop at Faith's place to wash off the blood and change clothes, and Faith decided to grab a few things (weapons) "just in case". He was fine with that, if only because he had no idea what they'd be facing. Might as well be prepared for anything. They also stopped quick to grab some burgers, because getting the shit beaten out of you made you hungry.

Eventually they discovered the GPS tracker on the side of the road, looking like just another piece of litter. They were in an area of pine wilderness, cut out here and there to make rooms for old farm style houses or McMansions, a modern dichotomy of rural poverty and casual excess that the people who should have found it ironic somehow never did. Faith was sure he should ignore the farms and concentrate on the McMansions, but that seemed too easy. If he was them, he'd take over something older, something that wouldn't stand out, something that blended into the background. That would be one of the older places, not a McMansion.

Faith drove around slowly while he kept a look out for anything he would deem promising, and he had his window down on the off chance he'd get an olfactory clue. But what exactly was he scenting for? He could smell exhaust and fertilizer and Chem-Lawn and burnt leaves, all sorts of scents that were a miasma and would probably hide anything that he might find helpful. If he even knew what it would be when he smelled it. Damn, they had entered the "stabbing in the dark" part of the proceedings fairly early, hadn't they?

Several minutes went by, and it seemed like they were searching for a needle in a haystack. What was he expecting, a big sign saying "Mob Here"? He thought he should hit himself just for being stupid, but he knew Faith would look at him funny, then volunteer to slug him if that's what he was really into.

It was then he smelled the smoke.

It wasn't a burned leaf smell, or even a burned garbage smell, or the scent of someone's wood stove. It was the intense, piercing smell of chemically treated wood, wood and paint and something totally wrong kindling and taking off, filling the air with particulates and a sharp scent that seemed to cut through his sinuses like a chainsaw. "Aw fuck," he exclaimed, bringing a hand up to his nose as tears welled in his eyes.

"What is it?" she asked, concerned, and then, as they turned a soft corner, uttered, "Fuck me."

The smoke was now visible, plumes of grey-white funneling into the sky beyond a stand of trees, and he told her, "Head for it."

"You think they're burnin' the place?"

"I dunno. It smells wrong."

She stared at him for a moment, eyebrow raised, clearly wondering if he was fucking with her. She decided he wasn't, and drove towards the smoke.

Eventually they came to a gravel drive that wound down towards an older style home, although it was the actual outbuilding - the barn, although Logan doubted it had been used in that capacity for several years - was what was currently burning. Flames were consuming the entire left side, and the door was slightly ajar, grey smoke pouring out from within. Here the sharp chemical smell was almost overpowering, but he was getting accustomed to it. And layered beneath it, he could smell blood and burnt flesh along with accelerant. "Shit," he exclaimed, bolting out of the car and heading for the barn.

"Logan!" Faith shouted.

"It's okay - this can't kill me," he shouted back, assuming that was her concern. Of course, was he certain fire couldn't kill him? He had a suspicion it wouldn't - if being at ground zero of an explosion hadn't killed him, would a mere flame do it? - but he wasn't sure he wanted to find out either. Still, he had committed to this, and he couldn't chicken out now.

He kicked open the barn door to see that the place was a cathedral of flames, something up in the hayloft feeding the fire, the flames racing across the ceiling like it was a contest. Down on the floor not far from him were tire tracks in the dirt floor, and a few dead men. A couple appeared to have been shot, blood pooling around their bodies and reflecting the flames like a mirror, and others appeared to have had their necks broken, their heads turned as if to look behind them. They were all dark clad, thick necked thugs, Russian mafia muscle.

Faith came up behind him, looking over his shoulder, holding her coat over her nose and mouth to try and blunt the smoke. "Party crashers?" she wondered, coughing faintly.

Tears of irritation were running down Logan's face, as the accelerant scent was so sharp it was like inhaling broken glass. He coughed reflexively, and that just made the tears worse. "No. Mystique." This had her fingerprints all over it, didn't it? Just what he was afraid of. He could almost hear Marc saying, _"See? I told you so," _like he was suddenly gifted with telepathy.

Here were some mafia thugs, and what could have been the remains of a Hype lab of some sort. But where was Vogel, and where was Mystique? But that was a stupid question.

Find one of them, and you'd find the other.


	10. Chapter 10

10

The one thing going for them was she couldn't have left too long ago. If she had, the whole place would already have been in flames. They were just minutes behind her; maybe they could catch up.

Logan glanced down at the tire tracks in the dirt floor, and said, "An SUV or a big truck. She's in one or the other."

Faith looked at him like he just started burping the alphabet, eyes tearing up from the smoke. "Who are you now, Tonto?"

He scowled at her. "No, I just know some tire treads." Once they were out of the barn, he added, "Paleface."

She coughed out some of the smoke, then said, "Let's see how pale I am when I put my foot up your ass."

As soon as he took several cleansing breaths, almost but not quite clearing the scent of accelerant out of his nose, he asked, "Does that make sense?"

She shrugged with a pained grimace. "Prob'ly not, but I had to say something."

Fair enough.

The good thing about having a Corvette was you could get going fast, and by the time they got to the car and Faith had revved the engine, they were going nearly one hundred as she screamed down the empty roads, trying to catch Mystique's trail. It was a good thing that they were in a quiet outskirt of Vancouver, as there wasn't much in the way of traffic on the roads right now, and there was only one way Mystique could have gone if she didn't pass them (and no car or truck had). Faith was driving way too fast, but he doubted there was any police presence out here, and she had better than average reflexes, so he knew she could handle it.

He took the time to put this together in his head, but some things still didn't add up. Was Mystique after the Hype all along? Why? Was there something she hadn't told him about it? (Mystique lie? Oh wow, what a shock. Next thing you know, somebody was going to claim the Pope was Catholic.) There must have been some truth to the story about Vogel: not only was she far too upset to have been lying about it, but he recognized the man's smell, and it made his stomach clench. It wasn't good and he knew it.

So what was going on here? It was making his head hurt - or maybe that was the lingering effect of the accelerant on his sinuses. He was sure she'd used something extra pungent just in case he stumbled upon the scene. She knew he could be attacked through his sense of smell far more effectively than most physical attacks, a bizarre weakness that only a few knew to exploit. (And the Organization knew how to exploit his sense of hearing as well. He was just glad that he hadn't encountered that goddamn ultrasonic pulse again. Presumably it didn't travel well.)

He wished Marc was here, even though he'd probably be trotting out the "I told you so" guff. Marc knew how the devious mind worked. Logan felt he should know too, but Marc just seemed gifted with a deeper, more facile psychological insight. Maybe that's where the philosophy degree paid off.

He rubbed his eyes, the pain of the smoke gone, and Faith asked, "What're you thinking?"

"That I'm a total dumbass. I'm trying to figure out what Mystique is really up to and I'm drawing a blank. I mean, I know she wants Vogel, but what does she want with the Hype? Is she gonna destroy it, or flood the market with it to hurt Humans? But it would hurt mutants more - they'd be blamed for it. And people would have to want to use it; she couldn't make them take it."

Faith thought about it for a moment. "Couldn't she? I mean, for the toxin to work it had to be dumped in a water supply, right? Maybe she's gonna do that with the Hype."

"It could hurt mutants though. She doesn't know what effect it has on mutants; no one does."

"So she said. Do we trust her?"

Good point. "Maybe that's why she has Vogel. Maybe she's trying to get answers from him about it."

She shrugged. "Could be. Or maybe, y'know, she's just a psychotic bitch who needs to be stomped into a blueberry stain."

"I think that's a given."

"Then that's all the excuse we need to kick her ass. We can worry about the rest later."

As always, Faith had a good point. When they had Mystique, they could do their best to get information out of her.

After all, he had a wild card that Mystique didn't even know about. One that could make even her tell the truth, whether she wanted to or not.

* * *

Several minutes later, they saw a black and silver SUV down the road, one that looked fairly new and about the width of the vehicle they were looking for, so Logan asked Faith to hang back as far as possible so hopefully Mystique didn't notice she was being tailed. It was better when they reached the freeway, where it was easy to get lost in the multitudes. Logan tried to figure out where she might have been going, but honestly couldn't guess yet. She seemed to be heading towards Surrey, but he had no idea why she would. What the fuck was in Surrey? All he knew was the Russian mob didn't have a big influence there, so perhaps that was enough.

If Mystique knew she was being tailed, she gave no sign of it. Her driving was pretty normal, no evasive behavior … but that in itself made him suspicious. God, he was so fucking paranoid nothing was ever going to make him happy. He supposed he was going to have live with that.

"So what's the plan?" Faith asked.

"Umm … good question. Guess it depends on where she's going."

"You don't know?"

"My best guess is Surrey. But that's about as specific as I can get right now."

"That's not very helpful, hon."

"I realize that. But that's all I g -" he was glancing in the rearview mirror - habit; when trailing someone, he always had the tendency to check and make sure he wasn't being followed as a kind of trap - and he saw a black Escalade with subtle armor and tinted windows coming up fast, cutting in and out of traffic, not quite recklessly enough to draw attention to itself, but not exactly exhibiting safe driving behavior either. "Oh fuck."

Faith had been fiddling with the radio settings - she had satellite radio in this thing, which shouldn't have surprised him - and settled on Kane Hodder before looking up, her eyes immediately focusing on Mystique's SUV four cars ahead of them in the fast lane. "We get made?"

"No. Look who's coming up on the left." He ducked down in the seat, below the dashboard, until the Escalade roared passed. Just as he thought, they weren't after them.

"Crap in a hat," Faith exclaimed, tightening her hands on the steering wheel so dramatically it creaked a little. Either she held back or it was reinforced, because it didn't snap in her hands like glass. "How do they know where she is when we just barely did?"

There was only one logical answer. "There's a transponder in the SUV. Probably a second one. Mystique found the first one and probably left it at the barn, unaware there was a second hidden in the vehicle. That's an old Organization trick. Kind of surprised the mob are using it."

"How much money are they sinking into transponders?" she wondered, with a sarcastic _tsk_. "Very wasteful."

"Yet, in this case, very effective." He didn't know what the mob guys in the Escalade were going to try, but he figured they'd go one of two ways: try and run (ram?) her off the road, or open fire on her. Both were awful considering the amount of people on the road. It wasn't rush hour, but it was pretty busy, and the odds of collateral damage was astronomical, especially if they opened fire and people started panicking.

Sometimes Logan just really wanted to beat the shit out of himself. Had he learned nothing in his seemingly endless life? If there is a choice of options, always go with the worst case scenario and you will never be wrong. The mob proved this to him by lowering their side windows and opening fire with automatic weapons on the back of the SUV.

"Fuck!" Faith cursed, barely swearing in time to miss a Jeep Cherokee that made a sudden, erratic lane change. More cars were swerving off the road - some hit by bullets, others hit by flying debris or other cars, some people just panicking and losing control of their cars. The SUV had had its back window blown out, and it was leaking something that was more than likely gasoline, but Mystique was taking advantage of the panic to open up the throttle in the quickly emptying lanes. Logan wondered how far she'd get before she ran out of gas.

"Can't they light that?" Faith asked, jerking her head towards the gasoline trail.

"They can, but it'll never catch up the SUV unless it comes to a dead stop. Even then, most gas tank explosions only happen in movies."

"But it can still catch on fire, right?"

She had a point. "Fuck."

More shots caused the right rear tire of the SUV to explode, flinging rubber fragments like shrapnel, and a stray bullet shattered the side window of a Honda that jerked suddenly into a spin and was quickly t-boned by the Chevy behind it. Goddamn it, this was turning into a bloodbath. He was going to have expose them; he could at least console himself with the knowledge that they could easily catch Mystique now, even if she did realize they were following her.

"Is this your car?" he asked Faith.

She shook her head. "It's Tony's. He lets me have a pick from his garages in whatever city we're in."

Logan was tempted to ask how many cars he owned scattered among how many cities, but then decided it was a topic for another time. "Good, so we can hurt it."

Faith nodded. "Yep. Should I ram them?"

How could you not love a woman who didn't ask "_What_?" or "_Why?", _just offered to go to ramming speed. He really should marry her. "A Corvette ramming an armored Escalade? No, that'd only work if we were goin' a hundred twenty." Also, he doubted Faith would survive such a collision, Slayer healing factor or not. This was a Corvette, and the reason it could go so fast was it had a light fiberglass body that offered almost no protection in a high speed crash. "I want you to pull up to it. I'm gonna have to jump on and get 'em the old fashioned way."

"Awesome," she exclaimed with a bizarre sort of cheerfulness, a broad, unsettling grin splitting her face. "I always wanted to do a Road Warrior thing."

"Once I'm out, keep tailin' Mystique. I'll catch up with you or you can come back and get me."

She gazed at him with a smirk. "Glory hog." She then put the pedal to the metal, effortlessly swerving in and out of panicking traffic and avoiding debris, heading for the Escalade, while Logan opened the passenger side window and climbed out, sitting on the window's edge with his legs still inside the car. They were racing along at ludicrous speeds, dangerous ones, especially with other cars crashing into each other and debris flying around, but that's where having a healing factor came in handy.

The mobsters were so focused on Mystique that they didn't realize they were coming up on them, so he climbed up a bit more onto the roof. It was starting to dent and buckle under his weight, but not totally, so it was holding up for now. A good thing, as he didn't want to accidentally make Faith a pancake. Despite the wind screaming in his ears, along with the sharp bursts of gunfire and breaking glass, he heard Faith shouting inside the car, in a comically deep voice, "Just walk away!" It was a line from The Road Warrior.

Yeah, he was really going to have to marry her now. He'd be nuts not to.

He popped one set of claws and used them basically as pitons - and it was a very fine line between using them as a brace and using them as the jaws of life to open up a car like a tin can - as he used the fingers on his other hand to try and get a hold of the car. This was difficult as he climbed out on the roof, kneeling as both wind and velocity wanted to send him flying away like a paper bag. That fact that Faith was occasionally swerving to avoid detritus and other cars wasn't helping either.

But once he was certain he had things under control (for the moment at the very least), he was able to bring himself up into a deep crouch, like he was surfing on top of the car. Anybody looking on might think they were filming the third Jackass movie, except most people were more concerned with the gunfire and whatnot. To prove just how much Mystique cared about collateral damage, she deliberately rammed a Kia that was going too slow and sent it spinning off the freeway, crumpled up like a tin can. She was still moving at a good clip, losing gas and some speed now that she was running on the rim of the missing rear tire. It was making a painful grating noise, tearing up the roadway and shooting sparks, which had ignited tiny pockets of spilled gasoline, but most were extinguished by the breeze of passing cars or the cars themselves. The tiny pockets of flame were no danger to anyone, but he had no idea how long she could ride the rim at these speeds, and adding bleeding gas into the equation meant she was on even less borrowed time than she was before. If she didn't lose control and crash in a big ugly mess, she'd be very lucky.

Faith pulled up even with the Escalade and swerved towards it, giving Logan a very short leap across. As he did, he popped his second set of claws and drove them in through the open passenger side window, driving them deep into the flesh of the gunman and into the seat behind him, his gun falling silent as he made a wet gagging noise. He grabbed onto the inside of the door with his other hand and hung on, inches from the roadway but otherwise safe, as Faith sped the Corvette up and tried to catch up to Mystique. He was pretty sure he heard her shouting an excited, "Yee haw!"

Logan was hanging on to the door of the Escalade for dear life, the road screaming by beneath his feet at a rate that certainly wouldn't kill him if he fell, but would take off most layers of skin, and he knew from experience that hurt like a motherfucker. Aware he was there, the mobsters inside started shooting at him, but they shot their own man, who wasn't dead in spite of Logan having his claws buried in him, but was now as bullets exploded through his chest and midsection, splattering Logan with his blood.

Logan pulled himself up into the passenger side window. The driver was swerving wildly to throw him off, but he was too much inside the Escalade for that to work now. The driver pulled out a handgun and fired at almost point blank range, but still he only hit Logan's shoulder, and the bullet ricocheted off bone, putting a hole in the windshield. Perhaps this made the men in back think someone else was firing on them as well, as they opened fire in his direction and outward, and once again they hit their own man, the driver this time, his head exploding like a balloon full of blood. Logan had just pulled himself into the SUV entirely when this happened, and reached across to grab the steering wheel as bullets slammed into his own body, but it was already too late, as the Escalade jerked violently, death spasms causing the driver's body to hit both the gas pedal and the brake, and suddenly the world turned upside down.

They were tumbling end over end, off the road and into the grassy median, glass shattering and everything not strapped down being thrown around the cabin, and Logan guessed he now knew what a towel in a dryer must have felt like.


	11. Chapter 11

11

Logan tried to grab on to something and steady himself, but it never exactly worked, and he ended up being thrown around and faceplanting against both the seat and ceiling, as well as colliding with a loose gun and a corpse or two. His nose broke yet again (fuck!), and his bottom lip split, filling his mouth with blood. He was probably cut by flying glass too, but it was too minor to feel. He never lost consciousness though, although he had no idea why.

As soon as the Explorer settled on its roof, hanging the men still in their seatbelts upside down, he crawled out the window, wondering if you could develop an allergic reaction to car accidents. Damn it, he was getting tired of them. He got to his feet, working the kinks out of his neck, and when he started walking back towards the road, a red Corvette screamed up to the shoulder, and Faith shouted, "C'mon! Move that ass!"

He could hear sirens in the distance now, growing closer, and took that as good advice. As soon as he ducked back in the car, she did a totally illegal U turn and sped up to even more totally illegal speeds to catch up with Mystique. "Weren't you supposed to just follow her?" he carped.

She shook her head. "She's making a noise like a cement mixer with a Lurmox demon stuck in it, and leaving a trail of sparks like a comet in a Ed Wood movie. We could find her SUV blindfolded."

That was true enough. "You know what a Lurmox demon in a cement mixer sounds like?"

"It's a long story. Just don't jump a Slayer near a construction site." She then grinned wickedly. "Unless I ask you to"

"Yes ma'am." Like he was going to say no to her. He knew better than that.

They caught up to the damaged SUV pretty quickly, but Mystique took the first exit they reached, and Logan figured she was going to ditch the SUV. She'd pretty much have to, as this thing would get a boatload of attention she didn't want. They followed closely, a car or two back, but just for safety. Mystique surely knew they were in the red Corvette now. How could she not? The problem was how she would react to it.

Eventually she swerved into a wide parking lot, where the stores it served seemed to be shut, but there was still a handful of cars in the lot. Faith roared into the lot after her, parking one row removed from her. As they got out of the car, Mystique was already standing beside the SUV, still in her Russian thug guise, holding her left arm. Blood was dribbling from it to the ground, not enough to suggest an arterial hit, but it was probably reasonably deep.

"What the fuck do you think you're doin'?" Logan demanded as he crossed the lot. "Why did you kidnap Vogel?"

She scowled at him. "I was gonna tell you."

"Bullshit. What's this whole thing about?"

There was sirens still in the distance, but there was a whole lot of them; it sounded like an entire squadron had been dispatched. Mystique glanced nervously towards the road, but there was no way they could get here so fast. "We really shouldn't discuss it here. We need to get out of here. You got room in your Matchbox car for a couple of passengers?"

Logan glared at her, wondering if this was a trap, or simply desperation on her part. He glanced at Faith, who gave the smallest of shrugs. She was leaving the play up to him. With great reluctance, he told her, "Fine, we can cram you in the back. But I want the whole fucking story - the truth this time."

"I never lied," she snapped irritably, opening the back of the SUV. There was an unconscious man hog tied and curled up in a fetal position. Logan couldn't tell if he'd been shot or not; he smelled blood, but that could have just been from Mystique knocking him out initially. "I just didn't have time to tell you every goddamn thing."

"Right," Logan agree sarcastically.

She gave him a scathing look before reaching into the SUV and pulling the unconscious form of Vogel out. For a guy who had to be about sixty he didn't look too bad, except he was out cold and bleeding a little from the head. His hair was thinning, but he dyed it shoe leather black, which actually made him look older, but he probably didn't believe that. Did any old guy? He was pretty solidly built, stocky, and he looked to be wearing an expensive yet threadbare suit, something he probably hung on to because he was cheap, or because he had some kind of sentimental attachment to it. Since Vogel didn't seem like a sentimental guy, Logan guessed cheap.

She slung him over her should like so much fertilizer, and Logan decided to step back and open the door of the Corvette so she could put him in the back and get in. He watched her the whole while, never offering to help, mainly because he'd helped her enough. Faith gave him a look that seemed to question the wisdom of this, but he just shrugged. They did have to get out of here ahead of the police, and this gave them both Vogel and Mystique. What exactly they'd do with them they'd have to figure out along the way.

As soon as they were crammed in, Faith got back behind the wheel and Logan took the passenger seat, although he kept looking at Mystique in the rearview mirror. She ripped a sleeve off Vogel's jacket and used it to create a tourniquet for the wound in her arm. "Can't you morph around that?" Faith asked.

Mystique scowled at her. "It doesn't work like that."

It didn't exactly. A wound was still a wound to Mystique; she couldn't just change her shape and make it go away. What she could do was change tissue density or move organs around if she had the slightest idea she was about to get hurt. She could also change the tissue around an injury site in hopes of slowing blood flow and containing damage, but that was about it. Still, she had an ability to heal far beyond any normal person's, although probably not close to Faith's (who was far from a normal person). "What the fuck was your plan?" Logan demanded. "Where were you taking him?"

"There's a safe house near Surrey. I was takin' him there."

"To one of their safe houses? That ain't smart."

"Not one of theirs."

That made him glare at her. "Then whose?"

She met his glare, having withdrawn her fake thug shades into her face. She hadn't disguised her eyes at all; they were usual Mystique black and yellow. "Someone I used to work with."

"Which - the Brotherhood, or one of the groups you used to spy for?"

Her stare was belligerent. Did she not want to discuss this in front of Faith, or did she not want to discuss this at all, in any capacity? "Doesn't really matter, does it? They're not using it anymore."

"So if you were the Canadian James Bond, what does that make her?" Faith asked curiously, adding more fuel to the general antipathy. "The blue Pussy Galore?"

Mystique impaled the back of her head with a glance, as Logan looked away and tried very hard not to laugh. "Are you flirting with me?"

That made Faith chuckle. "So your bread's buttered that way, huh? 'S cool. I know some cool lesbians. Not you, of course, but others."

"Putting limits and labels on sexuality is a very monoform thing to do."

"Monoform?" Faith wondered, looking at Logan to translate.

It took him a second, but it was pretty obvious what she was going for. "One form; non-shapeshifters."

"Ah. Yeah, well, when you can make your innie an outie, I bet it makes things kinda weird. At least it opens up the dating pool."

Again, Logan struggled not to laugh as Mystique glowered molten death at the back of Faith's head. If she hadn't been driving, Mystique could have very well punched her.

She gave Faith directions to the safe house, and Logan kept shooting surreptitious glances at Vogel's form hunched in the back, only moving when the car juddered or hit a crack in the road. Logan would have thought he was dead if he didn't know he smelled alive. Drugged? Must have been. But it was subtle, something that didn't reek through his pores or spilled blood. It made him wonder why she was bothering to be subtle. Did she not want him to know she drugged Vogel?

Silence filled the car, uncomfortable and somehow vaguely sinister, so he asked, "Where's the Hype?"

"Destroyed."

"You're lying. There were no drugs in the barn."

Mystique's eyes narrowed savagely. "It's hardly on me, is it?"

"Guess not. So what did you do with it? Stash it somewhere for later retrieval?"

She chuckled mirthlessly. "Still paranoid, old man. How can you be so paranoid and yet somehow never paranoid enough?"

"Meaning?"

"If the X-Men found you, couldn't the Organization have?"

"They thought I died at Alkali Lake."

"No they didn't. You were listed MIA, rogue. They knew you couldn't die that easily. They'd tried to kill you enough themselves."

He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. "What're you implying?"

She gave him a thin smile, sharp as a razor. "Supposedly one of their teeps made contact with your mind a day after you blew up Alkali Lake. They reported your mind was fragmented; gone. You were written off as crazy, no harm or use to them. They figured you'd either heal up and find your way back, or remain crazy and useless for the rest of your life. Joining up with the X-Men was the worst thing you could've ever done. You let them know you'd recovered. If you'd just stayed some homeless bum, they'd never have known you were ripe for picking. All that hell you visited on the mansion and those poor little kids … and Jean. It was your fault. You knew that, right?"

He shot her an evil glance, but before he could respond, Faith cracked, "Yeah, blame the victim. It's bullshit and you know it, blue balls. Since when do you blame fellow mutants for their own persecution? That's hypocritical of you."

Mystique didn't appreciate that on many levels. Her sneer was ugly and somehow shark like. "You don't know me, bimbo. Don't presume to."

"Actually, I think I do. I was kinda like you once, evil. You're tryin' to ride him down 'cause he's on to you. This op's a big sack of Cthulu crap. The toxin's gone, but it was the misdirect. It's Vogel you want and Vogel you got, but he's not dead. Why isn't he dead? You killed everybody at the barn, but you took him hostage. There's a reason. What is it?"

"What has he got that you want?" Logan asked, backing Faith up. She was right, Mystique was trying to distract him by playing on his guilt. And yet it didn't make Mystique wrong either.

Mystique looked between the two of them with deepening degrees of hatred. "You two are perfect for each other. You're both simplistic."

Faith shared a knowing look with him. "Insulting us is all she's got."

He shrugged. "It's a good weapon when your clip's empty."

"You're surprisingly smug for people who have no idea what's going on," Mystique snapped.

"Enlighten us, sensei," he replied sarcastically.

Again all he got for his trouble was a yellow eyed glare. "I think you'll get an idea when we get to the safe house."

"Is that where you stashed the Hype?" he wondered.

She just scowled at him. He didn't expect any other reaction.

"If there's a welcomin' committee waitin' for us, I'm using you as a Human shield," he told her, meeting her glare with one of her own.

She didn't even blink. "You're the only person I was idiotic enough to work with."

"For your sake, I hope that's true."

When he faced front again, Faith mouthed at him, _"Skewer her ass."_He would if he had to. For the rest of the drive - mercifully not too long - there was nothing but thick, tense silence. Logan wondered how Mystique was figuring she'd get out of this. He knew she'd try, even though it looked bad right now. One thing they had in common was they didn't seem to know when the hell they should just give the fuck up.

The safe house was a homely, unassuming little A frame set at the end of a long, winding driveway, behind a screening stand of thick Ponderosa pines and Russian firs that looked random enough to have been natural and not deliberately planted. Logan wondered if that was true, even though they were so tall and their trunks so thick that the youngest of the trees must have been twenty years old. It was possible that Mystique could have planned this far ahead, but it was more likely a government.

He got of the car, still behind the open passenger door, and took deep breaths, parsing the scents. The air was refreshingly clean out here, not counting the Corvette's exhaust, but mostly it was nature smells: dirt, pitch, pine needles, bird shit, decomposing leaves, faint traces of wandering household pets. But nothing recent; no one had been here in a while. So it wasn't an ambush, or at least not in the _"forty ninjas materialize out of the trees brandishing sawed off shotguns" _sort of way. That was kind of refreshing.

Faith got out, and stood holding the door open as Mystique struggled to pull the unconscious Vogel out of the back. "What did you give him?" Logan asked. "Roofies?"

She gave him a sidelong glance, and Vogel slipped from her grasp, landing in an ignominious heap on the ground. Faith made no move to pick him up. "You can smell those too, huh? I didn't think they had much of a smell, at least not the kind I used."

Well, hot damn, his random guess was totally right. Must be his lucky day. "Why'd you dose him with that? You don't want him to remember what happened?"

"Exactly," Mystique agreed, crouching down to get a better grip on Vogel. "He'll think the mob betrayed him when he comes to, 'cause that's what I'm gonna tell him."

Logan rubbed his eyes. He might still have had a splinter of broken glass in them; the problem was when his healing factor sometimes pushed them out of his eye they ended up trapped in his eyelid, which was a total pain in the ass. "This seems overly elaborate, 'Stique. The question remains why?"

She stood up, Vogel tossed over her good shoulder like a bag of cat litter, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye she was bringing her arm up like trying to keep him from sliding off again. "Yes, doesn't it?"

Logan barely saw the muzzle flash before he was hit in the head with the force of a wrecking ball.

* * *

It happened so fast it was almost unreal.

Faith had been looking at the house, a slightly run down place with peeling white paint that could have been the setting for Texas Chainsaw Massacre Four: We'll Run This Sucker Into The Ground, only she didn't know why she was studying it. Logan had those super senses didn't he, and if he'd already dismissed it, there was probably nothing there. It just looked like bad news. Actually, it looked like this place in Colorado where she found a vamp's nest full of little kids - maybe that's why she didn't like it.

The shot was explosively loud in this quiet corner of nowhere, and as her head whipped around to face the noise, she heard another blast and felt a blunt, hard hit to her shoulder that made her stumble and fall on her ass. Her left shoulder started throbbing mercilessly, like an infected wound, and she felt a warm stickiness running down her arm and chest that she knew was blood before she saw it or smelled it.

She looked up to see Mystique leveling a smoking gun at her. She wisely remained out of kicking distance. "The only reason you're still alive, chippie, is because if he regained consciousness and found you dead, he'd turn the world upside down to find me and kill me."

Chippie? What the fuck did that mean? Smurfette kept calling her that, and it was driving her bananas. She'd have to Google it sometime, because she didn't want to embarrass herself by asking Logan what it meant. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. "You're afraid of him? Good; you're not a total idiot. But you know shooting him ain't enough to keep him down."

"Oh, shot in the head with a full adamantium jacket round? Sorry sweetheart, it'll keep him down for a bit. In fact, you may start feeling sick in a minute." It wasn't a minute, she was feeling a little queasy now, but she didn't show it. "Adamantium is ten times as toxic as mercury, you know. That's why you don't see a lot of adamantium wielding assassins running around. You need to be a level ten healer to have this stuff in you; Logan's one of the rare ones who could take the full monty of this stuff and not die. It's almost as nasty as he is."

Maybe that's why the wound was throbbing like a second heart already. She wasn't a bullet wound virgin - she'd been shot before in her endlessly fun life. But she knew the feeling of this wound, an ache and a strange numbness spreading down to her elbow, was different. A bullet that was also poison. That seemed like an unfair bit of multitasking. Hopefully her Slayer defenses could handle it. "You really think you're getting away with any of this?"

The blue bitch gave her a smug smirk. "I already have. When he regains consciousness, remind him I'm not the only one wanted by normal authorities. Those fuckers want us all, in one way or another."

"Tell him yourself." Her good hand behind her, Faith had picked up a good sized rock on the ground, and as soon as she was sure she could do it, she moved. She threw the rock, a hard overhand throw, and rolled aside at almost the same instant. Mystique fired, and the bullet hit the ground near her, kicking up dirt, but Mystique also let out a yelp as the rock grazed her temple. It only made her stagger back a step, but by that time Faith had rolled up to her feet and yanked the gun out of her hand, kicking her in the stomach at the same time. With Vogel on her shoulder she was awkwardly balanced, and she went falling on her ass right along with him as Faith aimed the gun down at her, racking the slide so another bullet entered the chamber. "Know what your first mistake was, Blue Meanie?" she told her, trying not to gloat. Oh hell, why not? She deserved a good gloat. "You didn't kill me when you had the chance. Did you really think he was the only one you should have been afraid of?"


	12. Chapter 12

12

Mystique snarled up at her. "You have a lot of nerve for arm candy. It's attractive … in an annoying sort of way."

"I get that a lot," Faith replied, pretending not to notice the insult. "So what's the big plan here, huh? You and Vogel fiancés or something?"

She gave her an amused smirk that Faith honestly wanted to kick off her face. "You really think that's how this is going to play out? I spill my guts and throw myself on your mercy?"

She shrugged casually, like she didn't care. The truth was, Faith wasn't really sure what to do with her. She couldn't kill her, as much as she wanted to, because they needed her alive to figure out what the fuck was going on. She could smack her around a bit - you know, just for fun - but she wasn't sure that Mystique wouldn't enjoy that on some level. And her arm was really hurting; it felt like it was swelling, bloating up until it threatened to break the skin, explode through it like an overcooked sausage. It wasn't, of course, but she had no idea that adamantium was that toxic. Logan couldn't have mentioned that? _"By the way, this stuff in me? Total poison. Try not to get shot with it." _Even so, it probably wouldn't have prevented this.

"You could do so much better than him, you know," Mystique said, still flapping her gums. "Not that I don't get the appeal. He has that bad boy charisma, he's built like a brick shithouse, and he's hung. He's got that great air of a guy who really has no inhibitions at all, and they're usually the best fucks. But he's gotta be old enough to be your great grandfather, or even older, which is kinda nauseating."

"Wait a sec. How do you know he's hung?"

She snickered derisively. "The whole goddamn world's seen Wolverine naked. It's that whole no inhibitions thing - he doesn't give a shit if he comes out of the explosion with any clothes or not; it never occurs to him to check. Or it could be he's just conditioned to be naked after that whole lab rat thing the Organization turned him into. Also, we've fucked. Long time ago, but he doesn't seem to age, so presumably the body's still the same."

"You slept with him? He doesn't seem to know about that."

"He wouldn't. I'm sure that's part of his amnesia or whatever. He was great; really pretty good for a man. Don't you think so?"

Faith glared at her through narrowed eyes, feeling sweat start to trickle down her forehead. Yeah, she really didn't feel good. Was she gonna puke? Goddamn it, you couldn't hold a gun on someone when you puked. "You really think that's how this is gonna play out? I get jealous and it all ends in some sissy hair pulling chick fight?"

"Oh, I hope not. I find women who really throw down incredibly sexy." She grinned in a sly way she probably thought was sexy and licked her lips, but as she did her face seemed to ripple, and suddenly Faith was looking down at Logan, leering at her in a feral way. "That's why I usually kill them," he said, and then lunged for her, springing his claws.

Being sick made her slow, but Faith wasn't stupid. This was simply Mystique, and while her claws looked metal, she knew they couldn't be - Logan had already told her Mystique couldn't replicate anything that wasn't flesh, muscle, or bone. They were good replicas of metal, but they were probably bone, or … who the hell knew? Didn't matter. They still might be able to cut.

Faith tossed the gun aside - she wasn't going to use it and it was only in the way - and grabbed Mystique's wrists as she attempted to skewer her, holding her arms out of stabbing distance, and brought her forehead down hard on her nose, causing it to crack with a sickening noise, and at the same time, she kneed Mystique/Logan hard in the groin. Mystique made a noise of pain even as she tried to shove her back. Faith went with it, not letting go of her arms, and turned slightly, her back to the Corvette. She fell back over the hood and flipped Mystique, over her head and over the car. "Think I wouldn't hurt my boyfriend? Wow, skank, you don't know me at all."

Faith turned to find that Mystique had managed to land on her feet, but just barely, landing with a stumble. Still, she recovered quickly, and launched herself back at her, claws first. Faith waited, then turned as if moving aside, quickly spinning into a roundhouse kick that caught Mystique on the side of her head as she was coming down. She didn't hold back, she unleashed her full strength on her, and Faith half expected her skull to cave in like a bad soufflé. But she was pretty tough, as all she did was fall awkwardly to the ground, losing her Logan guise and reverting to her blue assed self. She stayed on the ground, not moving, but Faith didn't trust that she was unconscious. She kept her distance, not willing to be suckered into a trap, and waited for her to move.

The nausea seemed to swell and subside, although the sudden burst of activity made her arm throb that much worse. She leaned against the car and waited. She was just catching her breath, trying to ignore her arm, when Logan asked, "How badly are you hurt?"

Faith jumped, spinning around, heart trip-hammering in her chest. "Fuck!" she snapped, glaring at him. He was standing on the other side of the car, a small trail of slick red blood on his face the only sign that he had been shot in the head a couple of minutes ago. "Would you warn a person before sneaking up on them? I almost elbowed you in the face!"

"I wasn't tryin' to sneak up on you."

It wasn't that she didn't believe him, it was just the realization that she hadn't heard him move at all. If he had been Mystique or a Ressik demon or any one of the million goddamn things that had ever tried to kill her, she'd be dead. She liked to think she was better than that. It was an unwelcome reminder that she too still had vulnerable spots.

Logan's eyes shifted from her face to arm, which he reached out and gently grabbed. "Shit. How's your arm feel?"

"Kinda shitty."

He looked at it for a moment, and said, "She missed the artery and the nerves; it looks like all soft tissue damage. I guess that's something."

She snickered as he let go of her arm and for some reason took off his shirt. "I forgot you can triage."

"Not really," he claimed weakly, grimacing in embarrassment, as he rolled his shirt up and started wrapping it around her bullet wound. He tied it tightly around her arm, almost tight enough to hurt, but not quite. The blood stopped dribbling out almost immediately.

"Why'd you be embarrassed about triaging? Man, that's a skill."

"It's not really triaging. I just know how to kill."

Oh, that was it. How funny that being a knowledgeable assassin could also make you a pretty decent medic. Well, not funny ha ha.

After securing the impromptu bandage, he looked at Mystique laying face down on the ground. "Have I told you recently you're the best girlfriend ever?"

"Not often enough. She really out?"

"She better be, or she'll be sorry." They both looked at her, and Faith realized that Mystique was in a shitload of trouble. Between her and Logan, they could ice the Smurfette pretty easily, especially now that she didn't have the gun. Sucked to be her.

Vogel was still out too, and hadn't moved a muscle this entire time. Was he dead? She must have given him quite a dose, although you'd think it'd be hard on an old guy.

Logan pulled his cell phone out, which made her wonder, because he didn't do that a lot. "Calling Mark?"

He shook his head. "We'll never get her to talk."

"You sure about that? I mean, I hate to admit it, but I'm pretty good with torture."

"So am I. But she's as trained to be resistant to torture as I am. We'll get nothing out of her." He then glanced at the ground as someone answered on the other end of the line. "Yeah, it's me. I need your help as soon as you get this." Logan then shut his phone and tucked it back in his pocket.

Faith eyed him suspiciously. "Were you talking to anyone?"

"Got Bob's machine." At her look, he added, "He'll get the message."

"When?"

"Don't worry about it. He's Bob."

"Yeah, but he's been known to take months off. How do you know -"

"This better be good," Bob said. "There are some killer waves off Venice Beach."

Faith turned to find him standing several feet away from them, a black surfboard with blue flames all over it held underneath his arm. He was also dripping wet and dressed only in one of those black half body wetsuits, only he had unzipped the chest and peeled off the sleeves, so it hung at his waist like a cape. His torso was exposed, much like Logan's currently, and also like Logan's, it was very nice, although a bit less hairy.

"You're surfing now?" Logan gestured up to the violet hued sky. "It's night."

"You've never heard of a night surfing? It's awesome. Never crowded." Bob looked down, smoothing his wet hair out of his face, and noticed both Mystique and Vogel crumpled on the ground. "Ooh, kinky," he commented, glancing back up at them with one of his many shit eating grins.

"Don't start," Logan warned. "You know what I want to do. Can you do it?"

Bob made a show of thinking about it, glancing at her arm in the meantime. "Ouch. That looks like it hurts."

Faith shrugged. "I've had worse." Stabbed and left for dead worse, but hey, who was keeping track?

Night was falling in gradations, hues of increasing darkness that seemed almost subtle, but it was much darker than she realized. Either that, or Bob's eyes really had momentarily glowed like a Paddock demon's, only bright blue instead of red. "You're fine."

She scoffed. "I wish I was, but -" It was then she realized that her arm really didn't hurt anymore; it wasn't throbbing or slightly numb, and the vague, lingering sense of nausea was gone too. Yeah, she felt pretty good. She undid Logan's bloody shirt and looked at her arm. Yep, it was fine - the gunshot wound was gone. "Damn, it's creepy how you do that."

"Isn't it? Hel's always telling me to knock it off."

Logan cleared his throat. "Bob?"

He sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward, as if so badly done by it was impossible to put into words. "We've been over this. I can't restore a memory that isn't there."

"But if I have pieces it means I haven't totally forgotten it. Can you reconstruct it?"

Faith wanted to ask what they were talking about, but she knew enough about Logan's relationship with Bob that she would be lucky to get a word in edgewise. So she just listened and tried to put the pieces together herself.

"Logan, it would be invasive and probably incomplete."

"Like I give a fuck about invasive. Do you know how many telepaths have fucked around with my brain without my consent?"

"I'm much worse than a telepath, mate."

"Yeah, but I can take all you've got. I've proven it."

"I've never given you all I've got, not even when you were avataring for me," Bob replied, but he slammed the tip of his surfboard into the dirt so it could stand up on its own. He was leaving muddy footprints in his wake, but he didn't seem to care. "There's background details I might not be able to fill in. It may come off, at best, like a fever dream, or a film with missing pieces."

"Can you take any missing background details from them?" Logan wondered, gesturing first at Mystique, then at Vogel. "They were both there."

Bob's golden eyebrows quirked up, and Bob looked at them intently. "Oh really?" Sure, he was one of the good guys, but the way he said it made a shiver go up her spine. When Bob sounded intrigued by something, it was never anything good.

Bob crouched down beside Mystique, and Faith almost warned him out of habit, but stopped herself. Like Bob needed a warning - Mystique needed the warning. "So, hon, you might want to wake up now."

She stirred slightly, but after a moment's pause, she sat up abruptly and turned, facing them but almost instantly turning to face Bob. She didn't look alarmed, but Faith could tell she was about to do something violent. It didn't matter. "No, you're not doing that. Face it, you're pretty much fucked. But you know, you're really hot for a blue chick. Most of the blue girls I know are Izahs demons, and they aren't hot. It's probably because they looked like startled armadillos, though, not because they're blue."

The look she gave him suggested imminent violence, but then she looked down at her hands, which were flat on the ground, like she expected to find them chained to something. "Uh uh, " Bob said. "And that's a rather nasty thing to think about someone. You're a bit harsh, aren't ya?"

Her gaze was laser like. "Who the fuck are you?"

"The name's Bob. And you can stop thinking of music, 'cause I'm not a telepath, although I can see how you could jump to that conclusion. Could a telepath do this?"

Bob didn't do anything, but Mystique grimaced painfully, and shouted, "Stop it!"

"What're you doin'?" Logan asked.

"Piping the local soft jazz station straight into her brain," Bob said. He paused for a moment, then added, "Okay, that's enough. Even you don't deserve Yanni, Raven."

Mystique's eyes narrowed to deadly yellow slits at that, and Faith leaned over and whispered in Logan's ear, "Raven?"

"Her real name," he whispered back.

Really? Wow, that was actually kind of cool. She wished she was named Raven.

Mystique took a very long, scrutinizing look at Bob, and something in her face changed. It was subtle, but it looked like, in a single moment, she had lost all hope. "Holy fuck. You're the one they call Pretty Boy, aren't you? The level twelve reality warper."

Bob chuckled good naturedly. "Pretty Boy? That's like the most awesome code name ever. I'm puttin' that on a t-shirt."

"The levels only go up to ten," Logan interjected.

"They made an exception in his case," she replied, speaking to Logan but keeping her eyes locked on Bob, like he was a poisonous snake that could strike at any moment.

"Too right! I get my own category," Bob chirped, grinning almost madly. "But you know, I'm not really a reality warper. Reality resists warping anyways; it doesn't like it. I simply reorder it. Take things that are here and simply shuffle the deck. Reality doesn't care so much about that."

"What do you think you're going to do to me?" she asked, sounding icy and resigned. She was trying to hide her fear, but Faith didn't think she was doing such a good job.

"Nothing. What I would like to do is make you tell the truth, but Logan wants to actually know what happened, and thinks he has a chance to do that. So you're gonna help him, whether you like it or not."

"No."

Bob smirked at her in a way that was unsettlingly similar to the way Mystique had smirked at her before the fight. Was that on purpose? "You don't have a choice. But it's funny that you think you do." He stood up, and Mystique looked like she wanted to move, but she couldn't. She was frozen to the ground like she had been glued there. She couldn't shift either; Bob had effectively paralyzed her. Now see, Bob would have been handy much earlier on.

Bob approached Logan, and asked, "You sure about this, mate?"

He nodded. "Hit me."

Bob grabbed his face in his hands and stared in his eyes, like he was going to kiss him, but he didn't. They were motionless for a second, but then Bob's eyes glowed cobalt, and Logan seemed to jolt, like he'd just gotten a few hundred thousand volts of electricity pumped through his body, but he stayed on his feet.

Faith wondered what was happening in his head, and if either of them would ever tell her.


	13. Chapter 13

13

He was aware of things in stages.

First stage was he was on a cold floor that could have used a sweeping. Stage two was an awareness of an odd, small choking noise. Stage number three was that the noise was coming from him.

Logan could hear other noises as well, farther away, like they were a room separated from him. It was an argument … no. It was one man speaking, and the other sounded distressed. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew what was happening was bad, and he was glad he wasn't a part of it.

He tasted something like old pennies in his mouth, bile and something metallic, and realized as his stuttering heart and ragged breathing smoothed out that someone had tried to kill him with … poison? No, he wasn't getting a taste of poison. Drug overdose? That sounded about right.

Although it was an idiotic idea, truth was it was a nice try. He may have been dead for a few seconds there. Powerful drug.

Suddenly he remembered: Vogel. Operation Overlord. He had been a guinea pig in this bastard's experiments, all for the sake of gathering intell, but beyond being aware a virus was involved, he knew jack shit. The whole operation had been a bust, and now Vogel decided to close up shop, take his toys, and go home. Why?

Pieces of information sifted down from his groggy mind like plaster dust from the ceiling. Somehow Vogel was tipped off that there was a spy on the inside, and the word came down from on high to scuttle the whole thing and bring his results back to them. But what results? Vogel's security was tighter than a miser's ass - he had no idea if he was even working on the damn thing here. It could be he was only torturing him for shits and giggles.

The voices faded … no, one did. Vogel was gone. The assistant was still around, making noises … choking? It sounded a little like that. Vogel had been conscientious enough to turn off the lights upon leaving his lab, so all was darkness, but Logan's eyes adjusted quickly.

His body was still shaking off the dregs of the drug, so he couldn't walk; he crawled to the transparent door that separated his little prison cell alcove from the rest of the lab and placed his fist against the partition and popped his claws, which Vogel had never discovered. The claws punched through the bulletproof glass, and with a couple of swipes he had cleared out a space big enough for him to crawl through.

The lab had a cold poured concrete floor, and while it was probably easy to hose down, it needed sweeping out here too. It didn't have dust bunnies so much as it had dust buffalo. He sat back on his haunches, the drug aftereffects fading to nothing, while dark shapes formed into lab tables and equipment that wouldn't have been out of place in Frankenstein's lair. But there was something new on the floor several meters away, moving slightly in a spasmodic way, making choking noises. Federov? Yes, Vogel's assistant.

Except it wasn't really Vogel's assistant, it was Mystique in his form. The real Federov was probably dead, weighted down at the bottom of a river somewhere. He moved closer, to see if she was conscious, but she wasn't. She'd also reverted to her usual blue self, which was a solid indication of total unconsciousness.

Did Vogel figure out she wasn't the real Federov? Was that why the hasty shut down? Had the great Mystique finally been tripped up? He'd have asked her, but she was a little busy dying.

Logan found the hypodermic used to dose her on the floor, and he sniffed the tip. He didn't recognize the scent of the drug, but it was something from the opiate family, which explained why her breathing and heart rate were plunging precipitously. Of ways to die, it was probably one of the most painless - breathing and heart rate slowed until it stopped. It was basically going to sleep and never waking up again. Unless you had a real bitch of a healing factor that didn't accept never waking up again.

He was aware he had heard some of what Vogel had said before leaving, he just filed it away in the back of his mind, as he was too busy recovering from his own near death experience. Vogel was apologizing to Federov, saying he was sorry, but he was a loose end and needed to be tidied up. He also said he'd say his goodbyes to Svetlana for him. Who the hell was Svetlana? Well, there was that girl in Moscow, but somehow he doubted Vogel could be referring to her.

There were no papers scattered about, but then there never was. He'd left in a hurry, leaving equipment behind, but he wasn't stupid enough to leave anything useful to the Overlord project. Which meant neither he nor Mystique (Federov) had been vital to it, which was a shame. Looking around, Logan found some old medications left behind, including adrenaline, which he grabbed. Was that enough for an adult of average height and weight? He thought so.

Here was a conundrum. Injected into her heart, it could revive Mystique, keep her from dying. But why the hell would he want to do that? The bitch was overdue for death.

Except …

Except she probably knew what Overlord was about, or at least knew more about it than he did. Together they could compare notes and see how it meshed up. She had information he was bound to need. Also, there was something in him that found it kind of offensive to just hang around and let a woman die, especially if he could prevent it. Shit shit shit. "If I was a decent assassin, I'd just let you die," he told Mystique, finding a hypo and sticking the needle in the permeable membrane at the top of the vial. As soon as he had loaded the hypo, he squirted a bit of it out as he flicked it, making sure there were no air bubbles, and then hovered over her for a moment.

Should he do this? Yes, he might get some information out of her, but she was a crazy, murderous bitch. Her death would actually be a good thing, and would probably save many lives.

Oh, fuck it. He was never the heroic type anyways.

He pressed down on her sternum to confirm her heart was in the proper place (she might have shifted it elsewhere), and then rammed the needle through her chest wall, hoping the needle was strong enough to take it, and depressed the plunger.

She gasped reflexively as adrenaline filled her heart and made it start pumping furiously again, but it still took a moment for her eyes to flutter open. She quickly rolled over on her side and puked, as heavy duty downers and adrenaline both could do that to a person. "How did Vogel get you?" he wondered. Mystique was a hard target, so he was genuinely curious.

After she finished barfing, she said, "He just jabbed me while I was trying to find something for him. I had no warning at all." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat up, looking down to find the needle stuck in her chest. "You'll want something for this, won't you?"

"Just Vogel." He grabbed the needle and looked at her. She gave him a grim nod, and he yanked the needle out. She cursed and grabbed her chest as he simply crushed the hypo in his hand and let the pieces fall to the floor. "What's up with Overlord?"

It took her a moment to answer, as she was still catching her breath. Since he knew needles in the heart didn't hurt that much (okay, they hurt a little, but still …) he figured she was still shaking off the opiate overdose. "It's all gone fubar. There was a leak somewhere, someone let on that his operation was compromised. I think it might have been our people - yours or mine."

It wouldn't surprise him if the Organization had tried to screw him - that's what they did, after all; Stryker was as trustworthy as an angry rattlesnake in a nursery anyways - but she included herself and her group in the equation, which struck him as odd. "Why do you think your people would fuck you over?"

Her yellow eyes were almost lambent in the gloom; they were nearly incandescent with rage. "Because Overlord is all about wiping us out."

This wasn't computing. "You don't mean you and me."

"No, all of us, Logan. Mutants. It seems the Russians have done projections that have us becoming the dominant life form, with mundanes dying out and becoming an obsolete evolutionary strain within the next century or so. They decided to jump the gun and even the odds."

"By killing us all?"

"That's the idea."

And the Organization wanted it, along with Mystique's people. Somehow he doubted that their reasons for wanting it were benign. "Does he have another lab somewhere?"

"Since I heard him refer to this as the secondary lab, I imagine so. But I have no idea where it is."

"Leave that to me,"

She looked at him askance, and said, "Maybe you want to put some pants on first."

He looked down, and realized he was naked. Oh yeah, he forgot. He just got used to the idea of it always being cold.

There were probably worse things in the world than working with Mystique. But he had a feeling he was still going to regret it.

* * *

Suddenly Logan was staring into Bob's eyes, and was extremely disoriented. It took him a second for reality to reassert itself. "You okay, mate?" Bob wondered, letting go of his face.

Logan took a deep breath, not sure he had actually had a breath since this began. "Was that all you could do?"

Bob shrugged sheepishly. "That was the most coherent bit I could put together. The rest is fragments, weird bits and pieces. I thought this was a pretty important bit, though."

He rubbed his dry eyes and wondered when the ache in his head would fade. Bob brain surgery hurt more than he thought it would. Either that, or he was finally getting old.

"What happened?" Faith asked, looking between them almost suspiciously, like she didn't expect either of them to actually answer.

"I did somethin' real stupid," he admitted.

"He saved her life," Bob said, pointing at Mystique. "Which is admirable really, although it does have a sort of _"What the fuck were you thinking" _thing going for it."

"I'm right here," Mystique said snippily.

Bob gave her a big grin. "I know. And even you can't believe he saved ya, 'cause you'd have never done the same thing for him."

"Not a shock," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, pretending he didn't notice the look Faith was giving him. It was a look that asked "_Are you completely fucking nuts?" _and he was glad she didn't ask out loud, because if forced, he'd have to admit he probably was. "So after he tried to kill us both, we went and fucked up Vogel's experiment, totally destroying Operation Overlord."

"Like I said," Mystique pointed out. She was desperately unhappy, and still couldn't move or shift into another form, as Bob wasn't allowing her to do anything. She was probably lucky to still have the ability to talk, although she didn't know that. Yet.

Bob had turned his gaze to the ground - or at least Logan thought that at first. But he was actually staring down at the unconscious form of Vogel, who still hadn't moved, and was probably still lucky to be breathing. Did she give him the same opiate cocktail he dosed them with so long ago? That would be quality irony, but it would probably kill the old buzzard.

Bob turned to him with a mischievous look in his eye that he knew couldn't be any good for Vogel. "Why don't we see what this dog's bollocks has to say for himself, huh?"

He nodded, the pain finally starting to fade. "Do it."

Faith came up beside him, leaning against his shoulder, and whispered in his ear, "Did you have a thing with her?"

That made him look at her curiously. "With Mystique?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck no. I have this personal code against sleeping with psychos."

"But you've slept with me."

Her gave her an exaggerated, evil look. "I'll pretend you didn't say that. Why d'ya ask?"

Faith shrugged and shook her head, but seemed to understand he wouldn't settle for that. "Nothing. She said you two hooked up once upon a time."

"Really?" That idea actually made his gut twist. You know, for all his apparent ease in getting involved with women way too good for him, he had many lonely and desperate times. Had he ever been that desperate? He almost shuddered to think. "She was prob'ly lying." Actually, he was hoping she was lying, but he had no idea. He could ask Bob for the truth of the matter, but honestly he was a little afraid to know. What if he had? That was just something he'd rather be ignorant about. Keeping her alive was bad enough.

He didn't have lots of time to think about it, though, as Bob had gotten the Vogel show on the road. "Wake up, Emil - you got some 'splainin' to do," Bob said, far too cheerfully.

Vogel stirred and sat up slowly, taking his time, as a frail old man would. When he saw Bob, he recoiled slightly and asked, in Russian, "Who the hell are you?"

Bob replied, also in Russian, and with a big grin on his face, "I get that so much you wouldn't believe it."

Vogel looked a bit like a turtle. He had a bald, round head and a pointed chin, and all his facial features seemed to be piled in the middle of his face, like at some point his mouth migrated up and his eyes migrated down and they all met half way. He was clearly old, yet he seemed strangely ageless - he could have been anywhere between sixty and a hundred and two. His eyes were so pale they were almost colorless now, his lips so thin they were nearly theoretical, and yet he stared at Bob with a mix of apprehension and haughty offense. "You work for that other one."

"I work for no one," Bob said. "Seriously, no one can afford me."

"Remember me?" Logan asked, not bothering to hide his contempt.

Vogel glanced at him, and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. But the stink of fear was unmistakable. "I thought it was you, but I didn't believe it. You should be dead."

"I get that so much you wouldn't believe it," he said, deliberately echoing Bob. Well, they all had their specific crosses to bear.

"You're gonna tell us everything about Hype, and what the fuck you're doing here, and who you're working for, and even your shoe size if I deem it necessary, got it?" Bob told him, like he actually had a choice in the matter. Vogel turned back to him, probably to tell him to go fuck himself, but as soon as he looked into Bob's eyes, his entire face seemed to freeze and go slack, like he'd just dropped into a narcoleptic coma. Except his eyes were open, and he was conscious, just totally under Bob's supernatural sway.

And he told them everything.


	14. Chapter 14

14

Logan just let the information wash over him, trying not to follow it too much. Sometimes it was better to just let it all pour out and sift through it once it was done. And in this case, it was probably the only thing that could be done.

Vogel was attempting to double cross the mob.

You had to admire his chutzpah, even though it was an idiotic thing to do. Yes he was making Hype, a synthetic version of an actual mutant hormone that seemed to cause strength mutations, but the mob didn't pay him what he thought it was worth. He made some tentative inquiries, and found a higher bidder: a group calling themselves the Freedom League. They paid him double to keep selling the stuff to the mob, and to never find a way around the more deadly aspects of the hormone effects on normals. Since they were paying him so well, he had no problem with that, mainly because it meant he was getting paid hand over fist for not doing work.

"Who the fuck are the Freedom League?" Logan finally asked. He just couldn't take it anymore.

"They're a new mutant group that rose up in the vacuum created by the dissolution of the Brotherhood," Mystique said. He couldn't tell if she was still under Bob's influence or not. "They're based in England."

"Are you workin' for them now?"

She gave him a dirty look. "I told you, I don't work with anyone anymore. I'm solo."

Bob looked at her. "Who's financing them?"

She shook her head in a way that suggested she wished to shrug, but couldn't. "If I knew, they'd be dead."

That was either unfettered honesty, or Bob showing his hold on her was still complete.

"Where's the toxin come into this?" Logan asked. "Was that a hoax?"

Bob looked back at Vogel, and answered for him. "No, it was real. He was trying to play both sides. This guy is a complete amoral prick."

Logan was sure there was something he was missing here. "Why would the Freedom League want him to push Hype? Mutants would be blamed for it."

"In the short term," Mystique said. "But the Humans who used it would still die."

"They were probably playing a numbers game," Bob offered, showing he still had a knack for thinking like a bad guy. "Sure, there'd be political mishegosh, but everyone who used it would die off. They were probably banking on it becoming the new creatine, in spite of the obvious risk."

"Nobody ever went broke banking on stupidity," Faith noted, with some obvious disappointment.

Logan pondered that, how people could be so lethally stupid (and yes, they could be), but he still felt like there were big holes here. He looked at Mystique, and realized she was responsible for that. "Why did you want Vogel?"

"You were right about her wanting to horde the Hype," Bob told him. "It was a big fuck you to the Freedom League, and a way for her to gain some capital."

That made sense, although he still felt like there were some holes here. But why wouldn't he? These odd contradictions seemed to follow Mystique around like a bad smell.

Bob looked at Mystique - okay, no, looked through her - and gasped. "Holy shit! Really? Huh. I guess that proves even sharks have feelings."

"What?"

"She also wanted to know where Svetlana was."

That name again. "Who's Svetlana?"

"Vogel's daughter," Bob told him, still looking fairly surprised. If you could surprise a god as jaded as Bob, that was something. "She was involved with Federov, which included Mystique as Federov. She actually grew to like her. She tried to track her down, but she seemed to disappear a few months after Operation Overlord went tits up." Bob turned back to Vogel and asked him, "Where's Svetlana?"

He had just opened his mouth to speak when Bob's eyes widened in horror and anger. "Motherfucker!" he exclaimed, forcing Vogel to shut up. "Your own daughter - you killed your own fucking daughter?!"

Logan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He wasn't really surprised. A man capable of torture was more than likely capable of murder. But of your own kid? Damn, that was harsh.

"Why?" Faith asked. She didn't seem surprised, but then again, why would she be? She didn't talk about her parents a lot, but he'd gotten the firm impression that they had treated her pretty badly. She seemed to assume most parents were bad, and that good ones were the exception to the rule.

"She was curious about Federov's sudden disappearance. She began to make inquiries. He told her to back off, she didn't, so he gave the order to have her killed." Bob was glaring at Vogel, blue energy starting to bleed into the whites of his eyes in his rage. It was probably a good thing Vogel was out of it, because he'd have shit his pants if he had any awareness of the deep crap he was in. Bob grabbed Vogel by the throat and slammed him up against the car, but he didn't react, because he couldn't. Bob's fingers were digging into his pale throat, and the blue was starting to bleed out into the air. "For no reason. You had no reason to kill her, but you did, because your fucking research and the security it was supposed to provide you was more important. You amoral fucker."

Faith nudged Logan's shoulder, and leaned in to whisper, "Should we do something?"

That was a good question, but it had an easy answer. "He's a god. If I understand it correctly, he's the only one who actually has permission to decide who lives or dies."

Bob held him by the throat for a full minute, obviously deciding what to do with him. And after a moment he seemed to rein in his temper and let him go, but again, Vogel didn't notice. "If I kill him, it'll be too quick and kind. He deserves worse."

Logan could totally understand that. But he had an answer for him too. Not too shabby from a guy who's bell was still ringing a bit from getting shot in the head with an adamantium bullet. "Give him back to the mob. You know what they do to guys that try and screw 'em over? It ain't pretty. And it's probably what he deserves."

Bob shook his head. "That's just cruel. Congrats. You'd have made an awesome super villain, mate."

"Don't remind me."

So it was decided to let Vogel go and return to his mobster masters with the ability to create Hype suddenly and irrevocably stripped from him. (Bob told him he would no longer remember how to make the stuff, and it was as simple as that - he no longer had anything to offer the mob or the Freedom League.) Before that, Vogel would turn over every document he had about Hype, and any samples he may have had left, over to Bob, who also said he'd make sure and turn the mob's stockpile of the stuff into Kool-Aid. (Faith teased him about that, asking, "Isn't that supposed to be water into wine?" Which led Bob to tell her, "Come on! Any third rate magician could do that! Crush some grapes and leave it out to ferment. Big whoop. But turning synthetic mutant steroids into Berry Blast Kool-Aid? That's talent.")

He made Mystique tell them where she'd hidden her Hype stash, and told her she'd leave here, check into a cheap motel under the name Elizabeth Borden, and sleep for twenty hours. When she woke up, all she'd know is that Logan and Faith had figured out the deal, stole the Hype, and let Vogel return to the mob. She was also told to let it go and not seek revenge, although Logan wondered if that would take. It seemed like a tall order.

The really funny thing about his? If Mystique had simply told him in the beginning that this was all about an old girlfriend, he'd have been happy to help her. It was the most Human thing he'd ever heard about her.

In a theoretical sense, things were over, but they weren't really, or at least Logan didn't feel that way. He felt like there was something he still had to do. It wasn't difficult to figure out. As soon as Bob was done with Vogel and had sent Mystique on her way, Bob - who had finally put on the rest of his wet suit, although now he looked like some weird stripper (_"Did someone order a skin diver?") _- looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and said, "You really expect me to just stand there, mate?"

He rolled his eyes. He wouldn't be Bob if he didn't jump ahead of things. "Do you mind not doing that?"

"Uh, yeah." He gave him a big grin.

Faith looked at him expectantly. "What are you planning to do now? Should I see if we have a rocket launcher in the trunk?"

"Ooh, those are so cool," Bob said.

Logan ignored him. "I just want to give a warning, that's all."

"A warning," she repeated dubiously. "Funny how your warnings usually end up with body counts."

"That's why I'm bringing Bob along. No one locks an area down quite like he does."

"Well, Marc gives it a yeoman's try for a Human," Bob offered. "It helps that he could shoot the pecker off a fruit fly at five hundred paces."

Why oh why did he ever take Bob seriously? If he had learned anything at all over the years, it was yes, the gods actually _were _crazy. They were all completely batshit.

And that explained humanity so perfectly he decided he'd rather not think about it right now.

* * *

Yes, mobsters were just regular people, albeit with divergent moral philosophies. Even if you never saw The Sopranos, you knew that. They weren't aliens. They were Humans, but … different. They had no problem killing people to further their businesses or personal interests. They were well socialized sociopaths.

Still, Logan found it absurd and almost kind of depressing to pop into the middle of Radinovich's living room and find him slumped on his sofa in his boxer shorts, which were tattered and a kind of off blue that suggested they'd been once overly bleached in the wash, and a stained undershirt that was almost more yellow than white, and didn't cover the beige dome of a beer belly hanging out over his shorts. He was eating a hot dog and watching some kind of "ultimate fighting" program, with a couple of white muscle guys in shorts locked in a cage, beating the crap out of each other in what seemed to Logan a studiously delicate and yet strangely intimate fashion. (But then again, maybe that was just his ego talking - still, he bet if he was thrown in that cage right now, he could knock them both out in under a minute. He earned his fucking "king of the cage" title, damn it. He was never fancy, but he could knock the shit out of any normal Human, no matter how bulked up they were.) Bob clearly knew what he was thinking, as he began singing, "I got to box you for the money. Said it might end reeling and stumbling …" Logan flipped him the bird over his shoulder.

Radinovich, current head of the Russian mafia on the Pacific side of Canada, looked at them both with open mouthed shock, some of his hot dog falling from his lips and landing on his belly before tumbling to his lap. He opened his mouth to say something, maybe call for help (he wasn't alone in his almost palatial house), but Bob stopped singing and said, "Oh no, Pete, you're just gonna sit there and listen."

Bob was still barefoot and in his wetsuit, so he could imagine that Radinovich really didn't get him at all, and might have been a little freaked out, 'cause wearing nothing but a wetsuit into someone's house _was_ a little freaky. Bob had conjured up a shirt for Logan to wear - it did seem funny dropping in on a capo's house without a shirt on - but Bob, being his usual Bob self, kept conjuring up silly and stupid t-shirts for him. Faith convinced him to go with the t-shirt that had "Wolverine" plastered across the front in black letters, and underneath it a cartoon figure of a lunging man with silver claws coming out of his hands. It was a cartoon version of him, although he didn't recognize himself at all, and the X-Men's leather outfit almost looked vinyl or spandex as opposed to leather. (If that was true, then you'd seriously be able to see his junk. While it might momentarily distract an opponent, it would also provide a way too tempting target to hit.) Logan found it insulting, almost humiliating - he was not a fucking cartoon character! - but Faith laughed and said it was "cute". She asked Bob to make one for her, not just a Wolverine but a Faith, and he did, giving Faith a t-shirt that had her cartoon imagine depicted in a slightly more sensuous way, lurking in a dark alley with a playful smile on her face and a stake in her hand. She loved it. Bob claimed a cartoon version of him would be nothing more than a fuzzy blue spot since he was technically an energy being, but Logan felt that was a total cop out.

Radinovich kept trying to talk, but no sound was coming out as he opened and closed his mouth. He looked down at himself too, as if unable to figure out why he couldn't move. (Well, duh - Bob told him he was just going to sit there and listen, and that was all he could do.) Logan walked right up to him so it was impossible for him to ignore him. "I don't need to introduce myself, do I? I didn't think so. I just want you to know I no longer want Vogel. He's fucked you good, and you never even realized it. Keep him. You deserve him." Logan then thrust his fist forward, as if throwing a punch, and Radinovich jerked his head back, but Logan froze his hand several inches from his face and popped one claw instead, letting it out slowly until the blade came within a couple of centimeters of touching his right eye. The fear stink on him was awful; he probably wanted to crawl over the sofa, but he could only move his head, and now he couldn't even do that if he didn't want to poke out his own eye. "But get the fuck out of Vancouver. You get me? Pack it up and leave. I don't really give a fuck where you go, but if I hear you're trafficking in kids or mutant killin' again, I'll be comin' for ya, no matter where you are. And I'll take your head, and the head of every single stupid shit cannon fodder you try and throw in my path. Pissing me off will only make it worse for you."

Bob was singing again, but so low and quiet he was almost background noise, an eerie effect amplified by his choice of song. "A fire to feed, a self to bleed, strip the soul, kill them all …"

"Remember what happened to the Takabes and the Yashidas? Do you really want to be the next name on my list?" Logan stared down into his one visible eye until he saw the terrible panic and surrender deep within; the knowledge that he was utterly helpless. He might have armed guards in the next room, but they may as well have been a million miles away. There was no help for him, and to lie was to die right now. He had Logan Yashida and his fucked up singing friend in his living room, and somehow they were holding all the cards.

Logan nodded when he saw the acquiescence he wanted, and tried not to wince at the smell and sound of piss dribbling onto the carpet. "I want you all out of my city by tomorrow. If not, we're comin' back to speed the process up, and believe me, you won't like it. I want you to spread it around, as loudly and widely as possible, that this town isn't friendly to your kind. That any criminal organization that wants to set up in British Columbia is gonna hafta deal with Logan Yashida. Got it? You let 'em know I haven't gone soft in my old age. Oh yeah, that reminds me - this is for those kids at the Tea Room." Logan slashed down violently, where Radinovich's hand was frozen in mid-air pulling the hot dog away from his mouth. Logan lopped off most of the bun and his pinkie, which flew to the carpet and momentarily rolled, while the bun fragment bounced in a truly unappetizing way. He was afraid Bob might object to this, but after the way he flipped on Vogel when he realized he murdered his daughter, he figured not. After all, this was kids they were talking about.

Radinovich made a high pitched squeaking noise and his eyes bulged hideously in a round face that bore the marks and scars of a hood's life - he probably fought his way up from the rough streets of Moscow, only to end up this, a fat sack of shit couch potato watching vaguely homoerotic blood sports in a McMansion near Burnaby. How the mighty had fallen … although he was never mighty. Roughly competent? Unbelievably lucky until this moment and place in time? Hard to say, and frankly, Logan didn't give a shit. The pinkie disappeared, courtesy of Bob: getting it reattached would fuck the meaning of his getting mutilated in the first place. "You deserve worse. I was gonna take your entire fucking hand, but Bob convinced me this was funnier. You know a lot of Yakuza get fingers cut off when they fuck up? Explain that to your men. And every time you look at the hand, think of me, asshole, and remember I'm good for my word. The next time, I take it all."

He stepped away from the pathetic form of Radinovich, who was pale from fear (it was too early to ascribe it to blood loss), and probably wondering how his life had taken such a dramatic turn for the worse. He was the king predator, the top of the food chain … but he was motherfucking Wolverine. Since when did wolverines ever pay attention to the food chain? There was something to be said for belligerently refusing to accept your assigned slot in life.

He walked back beside Bob, ready to go, but told Radinovich one last thing. "Run while you can. 'Cause the next time I see you, I'm the only one walking away."

Bob waved at him like a beauty pageant contestant, gave him a big smile, and said, "Consider yourself lucky I didn't turn you into a chicken."

Now those were words to live by.

There was nothing to do but wait now, and see what new shitstorm touched down.


	15. Chapter 15

15

Logan knew he should be preparing for the hell that could very well be falling on his shoulders shortly, but he still slept like a baby.

Bob went back to surfing, and Logan told Faith what he'd done on their way back to Vancouver. It made her chuckle and she said that next time he was bringing her along or their days of sleeping together were over. Damn, she always knew the threats that would hit him the hardest.

Logan figured he slept harder than he intended because he'd been doing a lot of healing, and that always seemed to take it out of him. He really needed to stop getting in car crashes.

When he woke, it was already after noon, and Faith had left him a note saying she had to be with Tony at this meeting, but she'd be back afterwards. Which meant he could keep sleeping in, but he felt terribly lazy, and besides, he had to see if there was any fall out yet.

There were two ways the mob could play this: the smart way, which was to get the fuck out of Dodge. The other way - the stupid, and therefore most likely, way - was to decide he was a problem that needed to be taken care of, something that needed to be killed or at least run out on a rail. How they would do this he had no idea, but he was curious to find out.

He made some breakfast (okay, lunch at this point) and turned on the midday news, to see if any of it made the media. The answer was an unsurprising no. The problem was neither he nor the mob had written a diet book or made a sex tape. If they had, well then, they were in damn it. He wasn't sure about the diet book, but the sex tape sounded like fun.

The phone rang, and since this was Faith's place, he wasn't sure he should pick up, but since it was probably Faith, he did.

"What the fuck did you do to me?"

No, it wasn't Faith.

He recognized the voice as Mystique's, and he glanced at the clock. Had it been twenty hours? He guessed so. "What'cha talkin' about? We kicked your ass, darlin'. End of story."

"No it's not," she insisted. "It doesn't make sense. There's no way you could have remembered what happened in the lab, and there's no way you and that chippie could have outsmarted me."

"Oh, why? 'Cause we're stupid?"

"Compared to me, everyone is stupid."

"As long as you're not full of yourself," he said, trying not to snicker.

"You may be able to speak a fuckload of languages, Logan, but it doesn't make you smart."

"Hey, I'm a dumbass, I know that. But I know smart people."

She was quiet for a long moment. "You brought in a telepath, didn't you?"

"The only telepaths I knew are dead." Of course Xavier wasn't really dead, but only he, Bob, and Angel knew that, and the latter two only because they were his insurance policy against mind erasing. (Xavier couldn't access a vampire's mind, and if he even got within shouting distance of Bob, his brain was pudding.)

"So you say. But nothing that happened makes any sense unless a telepath was involved."

"Then they musta fucked with my brain too, 'cause I don't remember 'em being involved." He wasn't lying - Bob wasn't a telepath. Now if she'd argued it was divine intervention, she'd have nailed it.

"This is bullshit," she replied bitterly.

"Like I haven't beaten you before."

"Not like this. I should have the Hype now. What the fuck did you do with it?"

"Got rid of it. Kinda like the mob got rid of Vogel. Maybe we should send 'em a thank you card." She made a noise not unlike a "harrumph", but otherwise reminded quiet, her hatred oozing over the line like static. He remembered that the Hype was only part of her reason for grabbing Vogel. "I'm sorry about Svetlana."

And just like that, she hung up on him. He heard a very aggressive click and a dial tone, and he grimaced partially out of guilt before hanging up himself. He kind of thought that would make her hang up on him, but he wasn't sure. He should have known better - it was a weakness she loathed. The fact that he knew was something new to hold against him.

He finished his lunch and was loading the dishes in the dishwasher when someone pounded on the door. It wasn't a knock; it was someone aggressively pounding their fist against the door. A cop? It sounded like a cop to him. But if someone wanted to arrest him - Faith? No way; Tony'd have her sprung in five minutes, and one of his high priced lawyers would move into the police department's ass until they begged him to go away - they'd have to send more than one person to do it. Or two. Maybe ten, if he was in the mood to cooperate.

When he went to the door, he was surprised to smell a familiar person lurking behind it. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked Brent Ellison as he opened the door.

Brent scowled at him, a touch more grey in his hair than the last time he saw him. He was starting to put on weight too, but since he was always kind of scrawny, it didn't hurt that much. Maybe a police department desk job did that to you. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Brent retorted, far more angrily. He started to walk in, and Logan could have body blocked him, but decided to go ahead and let him in. He wasn't here to arrest him. Ellison knew better than anyone that if he wanted to bring him in, he'd need an entire team.

Logan was still shutting the door after him when he continued his rant. "Are you totally out of your fucking mind?! I mean seriously. What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?"

"What are you talking about?"

Ellison stared at him like he had not only lost his mind, but had it laminated and put around his neck as a piece of jewelry. "You ordered the mob out of Vancouver, that's what you did. Were you drunk?"

He closed the door and leaned against it. "I did no such thing. How'd you find me?"

"I had information that you'd been seen coming into this building. I just asked around for the location of the prettiest dark haired woman here."

"Am I that predictable?"

"You don't seem to go for blondes."

"I got nothin' against 'em."

He glared at him, looking like he wanted to punch him, but Ellison knew better than to do that. "Why are you denying it? Who the hell else could Logan Yashida be?"

Logan returned his look guilelessly. "I'm not Japanese."

Brent's eyes narrowed until it looked like he was trying to make his head explode through sheer force of will alone. "Cut the shit, okay? One man who scares a whole bunch of psychopaths with guns? Gee, that's a huge field. I have no idea which one of the dozens of suspects I should choose. Give me a fucking break, Logan. Also - do I really need to point this out - when Lily first found you, you could barely string a coherent sentence together, but somehow you were totally fluent in Asian languages. For all we know, you could be part Japanese, you just don't look it."

"Maybe I'm just good with languages."

He glared at him. "Are you gonna cut the shit at any point?"

"Prob'ly not." Well, he probably owed the guy _some_ truth after all, if just out of respect for the late Lily Whitewolf.

Ellison threw his hands up and rolled his eyes, appealing to an invisible deity who wasn't here. "Fine, be a dick. I just hope you realize what you've done. By playing "hero" - or whatever the fuck you were playing at - you have fucked everything up. We had ongoing investigations into the mob, you know. But now that they're all running like someone yelled Uli Boll in a theater full of movie critics, it's all gone to shit. Years of work and evidence. Poof! Worthless."

Logan smirked at his rather complicated metaphor - Uli Boll in a theater full of movie critics? It was good, just a bit complex - but quickly rubbed it off his face so he didn't think he was smirking at him.

So the mob were doing the smart thing? Wow. Bob must have tipped the scales. It would be hard to ignore a powerful guy in a wetsuit. "Shouldn't the evidence still be good? I mean, yeah, maybe they're running for the border, but that doesn't instantly invalidate the evidence …"

"It also creates a power vacuum," Ellison interrupted, not really giving a shit about what he was saying. "Why the Yakuza or the Triad aren't running in to fill the void I have no idea - except, surprise, they seem afraid of this guy too - but I do know that what will eventually fill the space will be something bigger and nastier, something that will kick your ass. Then what the fuck will you do, Logan, huh?"

"I guess that'll be my problem."

"Yeah, I guess so. Except we'll all be paying for it. So on behalf of all the terminally fucked residents of Vancouver, thanks so fucking much." He turned and stomped towards the door, deliberately brushing his shoulder as he passed. Logan let it go, because Ellison had certainly worked himself into a snit. He also had a couple of good points … except, of course, he didn't know that he knew a lot of people. Demons, for example, vampires, even gods. Could the mob find a way to beat him? Sure, probably. But all of them? No, no way. See, that was the good thing about being a misfit and making friends with other misfits: sometimes their odd little talents came in handy. And he'd scratched enough backs over the years - mostly figuratively, but some literally - that he felt he had some favors owed to him. If he needed to call them in to deal with a bunch of idiot mobsters, he would.

"If it makes you feel any better at all, I have a plan," he told him.

Ellison just gave him a new variation of the dirty looks he'd been giving him since he stormed in. "I hope so. 'Cause you have no idea what you're in for now." Ellison slammed the door as he left, so Logan didn't have a chance to tell him that yeah, actually he did have some idea.

Maybe Mystique thought he was dumb, but he'd always had a nose for trouble. And he thought he had enough experience by now to know how to deal with it.

Well, most of it. Never all. But hell, what would life be without a few surprises?

* * *

THE END

* * *

Since at the time of posting we're at a year's end, I just thought I'd thank my many readers over the years - you are all appreciated - and wish everyone a Happy New Year. 


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